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AS   THE    HAGUE 
ORDAINS 

Journal  of 
A  Russian  Prisoner's  Wife  in  Japan 

By 
ELIZA  RUHAMAH  SCIDMORE 

Author  of  "Jinrikisha  Days  in  Japan,"  "Java:  the  Garden  of  the  East, 
"  China:  the  Long-lived  Empire"  and  "  Winter  India" 


Illustrated 


NEW  YORK 

HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 
1907 


COPYRIGHT,  1907, 

BY 
HENRY  HOLT  AND  COMPANY 


Published  April, 


THE   QUINN    ft   BODEN    CO.    PRESS, 
RAHWAY,    H.   J. 


TO 
EMILY  E. 


2138063 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  EUROPE 1 

II.  AMERICA 9 

III.  JAPAN 19 

IV.  MATSUYAMA,  THE  PINE-CLAD  HILL          .        .  36 
V.  THE   BARRACKS  HOSPITAL           ....  48 

VI.  THE  RED  CROSS  OF  JAPAN         ....  54 

VII.  THE   DOYO 64 

VIII.  THE  "RURIK'S"  MEN          .        .        .        .      '  .  76 

IX,  THE   CZAREVITCH 84 

X.  MY  JAPANESE  HOME 93 

XI.  AFTER  LIAOYANG'S  BATTLE         ....  100 

XII.  THE  SEPTEMBER  MOON Ill 

XIII.  THE  LIAOYANG  MEN 122 

XIV.  THE  SHAHO  MEN 130 

XV.  IN  KAKI  TIME            139 

XVI.  "LA  VEUVE  ANGLAISE" 156 

XVII.  "LA  BELLE  CANADIENNE"         .        .        .        .161 

XVIII.  LOVERS'  MEETING 170 

XIX.  THE  FOREIGNER  KWANNON       .        .     '  .  C    .  175 

XX.  IN  KIKU  TIME  .      .V       .        .        ,        .184 

XXI.  A  HAPPY  NEW  YEAH — FOR  JAPAN    .        .        .  190 

XXII.  ALL  is  LOST — EVEN  HONOUR             .        .        .  195 

XXIII.  "GREAT  SOVEREIGN,  FORGIVE  !"           »        .        .  202 

v 


vi 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

XXIV.    "KINGS  IN  EXILE" 210 

XXV.    DARK  DAYS 217 

XXVI.     FROM  PORT  ARTHUR 224 

XXVII.  THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  NOT  SMOOTH  IN 

JAPAN     .  232 

XXVIII.    DAILY  LIFE 239 

XXIX.  THE  EXILED  STUDENT          .        .        .        .247 

XXX.     THE  NIGHT  LODGERS 256 

XXXI.     THE  DULL  ROUTINE 263 

XXXII.  THE  FINDING  OF  TOSABURO         .        .        .269 

XXXIII.  A  LITTLE  VICTORY 277 

XXXIV.  MUKDEN'S   DESPAIR 287 

XXXV.  THE  HAPPY  DAY         .        .        ...    294 

XXXVI.  AT  HOME — COLONEL  AND  MRS.  VLADIMIR 

VON  THEILL 302 

XXXVII.  LOVE  LAUGHS  AT  PRISON  BARS    .        .        .311 

XXXVIII.  THE  RUSSIAN  ARMADA        .        .        .        .317 

XXXIX.    Two  FUTURES 323 

XL.    "PEACE!     PEACE!" 330 

XLI.     AFTER  THE  WAR 338 

XLII.  SAYONAHA!                                                       .    352 


THEY  PUT  ALL  THE   OFFICERS  OUT  IN   ONE 

COMMON  WARD  FOR  THREE  DAYS     .         .  Frontispiece 

PAGE 

THE  HILL  WAS  CROWNED  WITH  ONE  OF  THOSE  FANTAS- 
TIC JAPANESE   CHATEAUX 36 

THEIR  RED  CROSS  GOWNS  AND  PASTRY  COOK  CAPS  MIGHT 

Do  FOR  FUTURE  USE  AT  FANCY  DRESS  BALLS        .        .  102 

"I  DID  NOT  EXPECT  THEM  TO  FEED  AND  FAN  ME,  PUT  A 

CIGARETTE  IN  MY  MOUTH  AND  LIGHT  IT  FOR  ME"     .  124 

A  PRISONERS'  ORCHESTRA 160 

ONE  ARTILLERY  OFFICER  BROUGHT  His  LITTLE  DAUGHTER  216 

EACH   HAS  AN  ARCHBISHOP'S  PALACE,  LANDSCAPE  GAR- 
DEN, AND  TENNIS  COURT         .....  236 

LOOKING  TOWARD  THE  INLAND  SEA,  FROM  CASTLE  TERRACE  342 


THE  HAGUE  1899 

CONVENTION  WITH  RESPECT  TO  THE  LAWS  ANB 
CUSTOMS  OF  WAR   ON  LAND 

Annex:  Section  1—Settigerentt. 
Chapter  II— Prisoners  of  War. 

Article  VII.  The  Government  into  whose 
hands  prisoners  of  war  have  fallen  is  bound  to 
maintain  them. 

Failing  a  special  agreement  between  the  bel- 
ligerents, prisoners  of  war  shall  be  treated  as 
regards  food,  quarters  and  clothing,  on  the 
same  footing  as  the  troops  of  the  Government 
which  has  captured  them. 


AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 


CHAPTER  I 
EUROPE 

Thursday,  June  16th. 

'  •  ^HE  blow  so  long  dreaded  has  at  last  fallen, 
•*•  and,  after  crouching  away  from  it  for 
weeks,  it  is  almost  a  relief  from  the  long  tension  of 
emotion  and  fear  to  have  had  it  happen — to  know 
the  worst. 

It  was  not  the  unexpected  either;  since,  from 
that  day  of  awful  shame  and  stupefaction,  when 
every  one  turned  his  eyes  away  from  his  friend's 
gaze  in  humiliation  at  the  defeat  of  our  army  at 
the  Yalu  River,  and  its  flight  from  the  yellow 
hordes — since  then,  we  women  at  home  have  had 
our  minds  filled  with  the  worst  presentiments. 

Vladimir,  while  out  on  a  scouting  expedition 
with  a  few  Cossacks,  has  been  captured  and  taken 
to  a  prison  in  Japan ! 

That  was  a  strange  enterprise  surely,  for  a  staff 
colonel,  the  diplomatic  adviser  and  legal  aide, 
whose  presence  at  headquarters  was  solely  to  make 


2  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

rulings  in  international  law  and  draft  the  treaty, 
— strange  for  him  to  be  off  on  a  scouting  trip. 
Had  they  no  young  Cossack  officers  for  such 
work? 

I  was  wakened  early  by  Anna  drawing  the  cur- 
tains noisily  and  throwing  the  strong  daylight  in 
my  face.  Evidently  the  telegraph  messenger  had 
given  her  an  idea  of  the  contents  of  the  official 
message  he  brought,  for  with  great  excitement  she 
said:  "It  is  news  from  Manchuria.  Oh!  read  it 
quick,  barina." 

I  only  thought  of  death  or  wounds,  and  could 
scarcely  tear  the  paper  apart  to  read :  "Prisoner — 
healthy.  Write  Matsuyama,  Japan — Vladimir." 

My  heart  leaped  and  stopped  beating,  all  my  life 
currents  seemed  streaming  out  from  my  cold  fin- 
ger tips,  and  I  could  not  think.  Slowly  the  words, 
as  I  stared  at  them,  brought  their  full  meaning  to 
me.  As  if  present  before  me,  I  saw  Vladimir  led 
along  a  road  by  soldiers,  a  cord  tied  to  his  clasped 
hands  as  I  had  often  seen  convicts  led  through  the 
streets  in  Japan — vividly  I  saw  the  disconsolate 
figures  in  faded,  salmon-pink  clothes,  and  peaked 
straw  hats  like  their  thatch  roofs  and  fences,  half 
concealing  the  faces.  I  heard  the  clank  of  fetters, 
and  then  I  shrieked  with  horror,  with  anger,  at  the 
mere  idea.  How  dare  they?  How  dare  they? 

In  a  fury  of  excitement  I  dressed,  drank  my 
coffee  standing,  while  Anna  held  the  tray  and  fol- 


EUROPE  3 

lowed  me  around  the  room,  blankly,  dumbly,  won- 
dering. I  almost  ran  to  the  A s  to  tell  them. 

Of  course  I  should  go  at  once  to  Japan.  Of  that 
there  was  no  kind  of  doubt.  With  no  family,  no 
children,  no  estates,  no  people  or  duties  to  hold  me 
here,  how  could  it  be  supposed  for  one  moment  that 
I  should  not  go  to  Japan?  Should  I  sit  here  in 
Petersburg,  and  Vladimir  live  in  prison  in  Japan? 
Not  at  all.  Not  at  all. 

I  dread  the  Red  Cross  meetings,  because  some 
women  always  talk  of  Japan,  as  they  do  of  Eng- 
land, with  the  view  of  deriding  and  insulting  me, 
it  would  seem.  At  that  last  meeting,  Sophia  and 
Hilka  Belogotrovy  were  discussing  whether  it 
would  not  be  better  to  be  killed  outright  in  battle, 
than  to  be  tortured  and  starved  to  death  in  a 
Japanese  prison.  I  kept  still  with  difficulty,  and 
Sophia  was  malicious  enough  to  see  it,  and  rant 
the  more  for  my  benefit.  They  will  not  under- 
stand that  there  is  any  difference  between  Japan 
and  China,  and  I  long  ago  found  it  of  no  avail  to 
try  to  set  them  right  about  Japan  and  the 
Japanese.  They  called  me  "Japonski"  if  I  at- 
tempted to  tell  them  anything  about  Japan. 
They  prefer  an  imaginary  barbarism  to  the  highly 
civilised  Japan  that  exists. 

This  hideous  war  has  resulted  from  just  such 
Russian  ignorance  of  Japan ;  and  then,  it  is  cruel, 
after  my  long  and  loyal  championship  of  Japan  in 


4  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

all  countries,  that  this  blow  should  come  to  me 
from  it.  I  can  laugh  now,  almost  to  hysterics,  to 
remember  how  I  besought  Vladimir  to  throw  all 
his  influence,  to  strain  every  point  of  mercy  when 
it  came  to  the  treaty-making;  to  be  merciful  to 
the  spirited,  sensitive  people  who  could  not  com- 
prehend what  they  were  so  madly  rushing  upon. 
And  how  I  threatened  to  rush  across  and  join  him 
in  Tokyo,  when  a  triumphant  Russia  should  be 
making  peace  terms  there!  I  counted  upon  the 
negotiation  and  all  that  occupying  a  long  time, 
and  I  wanted  to  be  there  again — to  see  the  old 
pine  trees  on  the  grey  castle  walls,  the  pink  and 
white  lotus  in  the  long  stretches  of  the  castle 
moats — and  to  soften  the  hearts  of  the  conqueror 
to  the  Japanese,  whom  I  have  loved  so  long  and 
so  much.  And  now,  on  what  an  errand  I  go  to 
Japan ! 

At  first,  they  thought  it  madness  for  me  to 
think  of  going  to  Japan,  and  opposed  it.  "They 
will  imprison  you  too  and  who  knows  what  tor- 
tures they  have  in  their  filthy  prisons. — Oh! 
They  will  make  both  of  you  work  in  their  nasty 
rice  fields,"  said  the  Princess  Tilly,  who  was  never 
clear  in  her  mind  that  Japan  was  not  a  province 
of  China. 

I  wanted  to  leave  that  very  night,  but  the 
trans-Siberian  line  was  impossible  because  of  the 
delays  and  the  impasse  at  the  Manchurian  end, 


EUROPE  5 

and  the  Suez  route  was  not  to  be  faced  in  mid- 
summer. Nicholas  A explained  to  me  quietly 

about  my  passport  for  leaving  Russia,  in  the  first 
place ;  my  letter  of  credit  for  funds  to  travel  with, 
in  the  second  place;  besides  the  necessity  of  send- 
ing requests  to  take  leave  at  Tsarskoe,  and  of  the 
Grand  Duchesses,  and  of  resigning  from  the  Red 
Cross  Committees. 

All  my  world  of  Petersburg  came  to  the  station 
to  see  me  off ,  with  flowers,  lamentations,  bonbons, 
books,  and  cheers  for  my  long  voyage.  It  was 
little  like  that  going  away  of  the  troops  early  in 
the  year  with  gay  promises  of  "On  to  Tokyo!" 
My  "On  to  Tokyo"  was  sad  enough. 

I  slept  and  I  woke,  and  changed  carriages  at 
the  frontier.  I  slept  and  I  woke  at  Berlin,  and 
changed  to  the  Ostend  train,  and  I  came  into 
London  one  afternoon  at  the  end  of  the  season, 
and  found  such  a  strangeness  in  all  its  familiar 
scenes  that  a  chill  struck  me.  The  change  was  in 
myself,  not  in  London.  The  newsboys  in  the 
streets  held  billboards  announcing:  "Another 
Japanese  Victory.  The  Russians  in  Retreat  as 
Usual.  Kuropatkin  still  'luring  them  on !' " 
And  every  one  grinned  to  read  the  lines.  "And 
bally  well  they  deserve  all  this,"  said  a  man  in  the 
street  in  my  hearing. 

Barclay's  rushed  my  credit  through;  I  left  my 
jewel  box  and  all  Vladimir's  papers  with  them, 


6  'AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

and  I  added  something  for  faithful  Anna  to  my 
will  at  the  solicitors'.  Anna,  who  has  followed  my 
fortunes  so  faithfully  for  these  dozen  and  more 
years,  made  no  protests  against  this  strange  trip; 
and  as  she  is  German  and  is  good  in  her  English, 
and  is  unsurpassed  as  a  courier,  will  be  invaluable. 
I  drew  every  rouble  of  credit  I  had  in  St.  Peters- 
burg, by  Nicholas  A 's  advice,  for  he  says  he 

foresees  only  trouble — riots  and  revolution  ahead, 
a  Reign  of  Terror,  if  the  fortunes  of  war  do  not 
quickly  change.  All  these  disasters  have  inflamed 
the  people,  who  now  resist  mobilisation,  and  it  is 
a  question  if  they  can  be  kept  down  if  any  more 
troops  are  taken  away  for  the  front.  The 
Tsarskoe  crowd  are  furious  with  Kuropatkin  that 
he  does  not  land  his  armies  in  Japan. 

Now,  I  have  only  to  sit  still  for  these  weeks  to 
come,  and  think  and  think,  while  the  machinery 
does  the  rest  and  takes  me  on  and  on — until  I  stand 
at  the  prison  door  and  try  to  see  Vladimir.  I 
wonder  if  I  shall  have  to  sing  under  the  window 
like  Coeur  de  Lion's  little  page,  to  find  him  and 
let  him  know  I  am  there !  I  telegraphed  of  course, 
from  Petersburg,  and  again  from  London,  that  I 
am  coming,  and  he  must  know  that  I  am  now  on 
my  way  to  Japan.  To  Japan!  the  trip  that  we 
have  so  often  talked  of  taking  together ! 

How  strange  it  will  be  for  me  to  find  myself 
again  in  Japan!  A  changed  Japan,  and  a 


EUROPE  7 

changed  Sophia  Ivanovna  too!  I  wonder  if 
there  will  be  any  one  there  who  knew  me  before, 
eighteen,  nineteen,  twenty  years  ago?  I  fear  not, 
and  I  shall  be  glad  to  have  it  so.  Of  course  the 
name  is  different  now,  and  I  was  such  a  child  then. 
Certainly  these  ten  years  of  quiet  happiness  and  a 
contented  heart  with  Vladimir,  have  made  me 
another  being  in  another  world.  I  wonder  how 
real  the  past  will  seem ;  if  the  horror  of  those  days 
of  revelation,  disillusionment,  and  degradation  will 
come  back?  if,  in  the  same  scenes,  I  shall  see  the 
bloated  figure,  the  satyr's  face  of  Paul  before  me? 
and  remember  again,  how  his  hideous  nature  was 
revealed  to  me  too  late?  how  his  grossness,  his 
coarse  pleasures,  his  cruelties  crushed  me?  I 
often  used  to  start  from  dreams  in  a  cold  chill  of 
terror,  having  lived  again  in  the  dark,  gloomy, 
little  Tokyo  house,  my  bruised  body  aching,  my 
ears  ringing  with  Paul's  drunken  voice. 

I  could  not  endure  to  stay  in  Russia  after  that. 
Everything  Russian  was  unpleasant  to  me,  and 
England  and  my  mother's  kinsfolk  seemed  my  only 
home  and  attachments.  Then  followed  the  winters 
abroad  with  my  invalid  uncle,  the  meeting  with 
Vladimir,  and  last  our  happy  life  in  Rome.  In 
the  first  years,  when  Vladimir  found  it  necessary 
to  go  back  to  Russia  each  summer,  I  used  to 
wonder  why  I  was  so  indifferent  to  Russia.  Why 
I  felt  myself  so  aloof,  such  an  outsider  and  spec- 


8  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

tator,  really  only  a  critic,  when  I  was  in  Russia. 
Although  every  one  was  so  kind  to  me  in  Peters- 
burg, the  sovereigns  were  so  gracious,  and  Vladi- 
mir so  fortunate,  I  found  myself  caring  less  for, 
almost  disliking  the  Russian  life.  It  seemed  to 
me  that  the  whole  thing  was  a  sham,  a  thin  veneer 
of  western  civilisation,  a  clever  imitation  up  to  a 
certain  point.  The  government  denied  too  much 
to  the  people,  and  the  want  of  education  in  the 
masses  appalled  me.  Vladimir  has  always  be- 
lieved in  compulsory  education,  in  fewer  prisons 
and  barracks  and  more  schoolhouses.  That 
quaint  old  American  Minister,  who  came  to 
Madrid  after  Petersburg,  used  to  say  that  he  had 
only  changed  jails,  as  far  as  he  could  see;  only 
that  he  as  a  diplomat  had  a  little  more  liberty 
than  the  shackled  people  in  either  country. 
"What  Russia  needs  most  is  more  soap  and  spell- 
ing books ;  fewer  princes  and  more  country  school- 
masters ;  fewer  diamonds,  on  the  bare-backed  court 
ladies  in  Petersburg,  and  more  broken  stone  on 
the  country  roads."  "Then,  as  for  Spain !"  he 
said,  "she  wants  fewer  priests,  more  soap,  and 
more  schoolmasters  too."  He  longed  to  get  back 
to  "God's  country,"  as  he  called  America,  "Which 
smelled  neither  of  leather  boots  nor  garlic."  A 
droll  old  fellow,  who  quite  bewitched  my  Vladimir. 


CHAPTER  II 
AMERICA 

June  30th. 

TT  seems  ages  to  me  since  I  left  Petersburg  that 
•••  hot  June  day,  and  almost  as  long  since  the 
hotter  day  that  I  sat  and  stood  five  weary  hours 
on  the  docks  of  New  York.  The  Americans  claim 
to  be  a  civilised  people,  but  the  difficulties  they 
made  us,  the  restrictions  they  laid  down  as  to  our 
landing  in  their  free  country,  would  disgrace 
Abyssinia  or  Persia.  We  answered  innumerable 
questions  on  board  the  ship,  signed  papers,  and 
paid  an  entrance  fee  of  five  roubles  to  gain  the 
land  of  liberty!  What  a  misnomer!  It  must  be 
a  bit  of  American  humour,  or*  rather  a  gibe 
of  France,  to  have  erected  that  great  statue  of 
Liberty  Enlightening  the  World  at  the  mouth  of 
the  harbour.  Oh !  Liberty !  what  crimes  are  com- 
mitted in  thy  name — in  America. 

When  I  went  through  America  years  ago,  we 
had  a  diplomatic  privilege,  a  laissez-passer  for  the 
Customs,  and  all  that.  It  was  all  bows,  courtesy, 
effusive  politeness.  To-day,  Anna  and  I  are  only 
two  cabin  passengers, — nationality,  Russian; 

9 


10  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

occupation,  blank;  ages,  forty  and  forty-two; 
not  paupers,  criminals,  nor  lunatics,  as  they 
closely  inquired;  not  suffering  with  any  conta- 
gious disease;  possessing  at  least  one  hundred 
roubles  each, — so  that  we  shall  not  become  a 
charge  on  the  charitable  institutions  of  the 
country ! 

We  were  alone.  I  had  kept  entirely  to  myself 
on  the  ship,  and  we  had  no  one  to  appeal  to  from 
the  brusque  and  surly  officials.  There  was  no 
cafe  or  waiting-room,  and,  with  all  the  richly 
dressed  Americans,  we  were  driven  down  on  the 
dock  and  sat  there  among  cargo  boxes  to  wait  for 
our  luggage.  America  did  not  smell  of  leather  or 
garlic  that  day.  Niet.  Niet,  How  that  close 
warehouse  on  the  dock  smelled  of  low-tide  and 
horses !  Phew !  my  head  swims  now,  as  I  recall  it. 
It  was  a  heathen,  a  savage  and  uncivilised,  a 
bureaucratical,  tyrannical  America  I  found  to  my 
sorrow.  America  quite  the  perfect  person  for- 
sooth to  throw  stones  at  poor  Russia!  Certainly 
we  do  not  treat  prisoners  worse  in  Russia  than  the 
Goddess  of  Liberty  treats  the  arriving  sea  pas- 
senger in  America. 

So,  we  sat  on  boxes  of  merchandise  "in  the  foul 
etape,"  as  their  writers  always  speak  of  Sibe- 
rian prisons.  We  were  hungry,  without  food  or 
drink,  and  could  not  pass  the  cordon  of  guards 
to  seek  it  outside;  and  Anna  stood  for  two  hours 


AMERICA  11 

in  the  queue  of  convicts  waiting  to  draw  a  number 
for  a  customs  officer  to  search  our  luggage. 
Heavens !  how  much  better  they  do  it  in  Wirballen 
and  Eydtkunen  on  our  frontier !  and  at  Odessa ! 
Constantinople  even  would  blush  to  have  such  a 
douane. 

In  the  long  hours  on  this  ill-smelling,  stifling 
wharf,  the  passengers  greedily  seized  the  news- 
papers, and  again  their  laughter  was  for  Russia's 
misfortunes  in  war.  Nothing  was  lacking  to  make 
me  completely  miserable.  But,  at  last,  an  official 
came  toward  me  with  a  letter,  followed  by  a  man 
who  was  plainly  a  Russian  from  the  toes  of  his 
boots  to  his  blonde-white  hair.  "Lady,  are  you 
Mrs.  Van  Till?  because  this  man  from  the  Russian 
Consulate  has  been  hunting  you  all  over  the 
docks."  And  then  our  troubles  ended,  for  the 
Consul's  clerk  knew  how  to  manage  the  dreadful 
Americans.  I  don't  know  how  much  he  had  to  pay 
in  fees  and  tips  to  get  us  off ;  but  anyhow,  he  soon 
had  our  boxes  corded  and  sealed,  and  we  crossed 
by  a  ferry  to  the  city,  and  went  to  a  mammoth 
hotel — a  skyscraper,  they  call  it.  From  my  win- 
dows on  the  fifteenth  floor,  I  looked  out  to  other 
fifteen-  and  twenty-story  buildings  in  every  direc- 
tion. The  sea  breeze  blew  in  my  face  and  there 
was  no  sound  from  the  street  far  below. 

The  Consul  came  and  dined  with  me.  He  had 
been  cabled  his  instructions  from  Petersburg,  and 


12 

had  sent  his  man  to  meet  me;  and  he  had  taken 
passage  for  me  on  a  fast  ship,  which  was  to  cross 
the  Pacific  in  twelve  days !  Think  of  that !  after 
the  twenty-eight  days  we  spent  in  crossing  to  San 
Francisco,  such  a  little  while  ago. 

The  war  has  given  the  Consul  much  work  to  do 
and  keeps  him  in  town,  and  even  the  Embassy  is 
tied  fast  at  the  capital  for  the  summer.  The  news- 
papers in  New  York  were  full  of  praises  of  Japan, 
and  the  same  absurd  stories  about  Russia  that 
always  fill  English  newspapers.  It  is  still  a 
mystery  why  the  American  people  have  so  sud- 
denly forgotten  the  long  traditional  friendship 
between  our  two  countries,  and  the  gratitude  they 
owed  us,  turned  from  us,  and  lost  their  heads  so 
completely  over  the  Japanese.  It  is  a  sort  of 
insanity  just  now,  and  ever  since  the  Japanese 
have  won  a  victory  over  that  silly  Zakaroff  on  the 
Yalu  River,  the  Americans  seem  to  think  Japan 
has  conquered  all  creation,  for  all  time.  One  must 
wait  until  events  bring  them  to  their  senses;  and 
make  them  quite  ashamed  of  themselves  too,  I 
should  think. 

When  I  came  to  leave  New  York,  a  company  of 
seventy  Chinese  was  marched  into  the  station, 
counted  off  like  convicts,  and  locked  into  a  car. 
"This  is  the  land  of  freedom,  you  know,"  said  the 
Consul,  "where  they  do  not  punish  the  Jews,  no 
matter  what  they  do.  These  Chinese  are  rich 


AMERICA  13 

merchants  going  to  China  and  intending  to  return 
to  America.  They  count  them,  lock  them  up, 
and  guard  them,  exactly  as  we  do  convicts  going 
to  Siberia.  Some  day,  the  Chinese  may  get  tired 
of  their  treatment  and  make  an  uprising.  Then 
the  Americans  will  'get  busy,'  as  they  say,  and 
mend  their  manners." 

I  should  think  so,  for  the  great  republic  is  by 
no  means  the  paradise  we  hear  about  in  Europe. 
One  encounter  with  pure  Liberty  will  do  for  me. 
I  long  to  meet  again  certain  Americans  who  have 
made  me  blush  for  poor  Russia.  I  shall  make 
any  one's  salon  a  battle  ground,  if  I  can  but  meet 
again  some  of  the  American  critics  who  taunted 
me  in  Rome.  And  that  M.  Georges  Kennan  !  Ah ! 

The  consul  bade  me  good-bye  as  to  one  setting 
sail  for  the  unknown.  I  felt  like  M.  Andre  start- 
ing on  his  air-ship.  "We  cannot  send  word  ahead, 
or  do  any  more  for  you  now.  Your  own  tact  and 
sense  must  direct  you.  Go  at  once  to  the  French 
Minister  in  Tokyo,  and  he  will  do  what  he  can. 
Drop  Russian  speech  from  this  hour ;  and,  as  your 
name  is  so  German,  and  your  maid  has  West- 
phalia printed  on  her  face,  you  can  go  without 
suspicion.  But  remember,  there  are  always  spies 
and  informers  about  and  you  must  be  discreet. 
God  be  with  you."  And  then  I  lost  all  touch  with 
all  Russia,  and  really  embarked  for  the  unknown. 

On  shipboard,  while  we  were  crossing  the  At- 


14  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

lantic,  I  had  written  fully  to  every  one  and 
warned  each  one  to  be  careful  of  what  he  put  in 
letters  to  me.  In  New  York,  Anna  washed  every 
European  sign  and  hotel  label  from  our  boxes. 
The  four  days  on  the  train  went  by  very  quickly, 
and  we  saw  a  rich,  contented,  prosperous  country 
day  after  day.  Only  once  on  the  far  western 
plains  did  we  see  a  soldier  in  uniform,  a  suggestion 
of  war;  but  there  were  bulletins  at  the  railway 
stations,  and  every  one  grinned  at  fresh  discom- 
fitures and  defeats  for  Russia.  The  passengers  on 
the  ship  were  few  and  uninteresting;  it  was  cold 
and  foggy  ;  and  I  spent  the  time  in  my  deck  cabin, 
and  tried  to  picture  the  landing  in  Japan. 


Tuesday,  July  19th. 

It  was  a  hot,  steamy,  rainy  morning  when  we 
anchored  at  Yokohama,  and  we  quickly  went 
ashore  to  the  hotel  and  asked  for  rooms.  I  wrote 
my  name  with  hesitation  in  the  visitors'  book,  the 
innkeeper  said:  "This  way,  Madame,"  turned  into 
a  little  room,  and  closed  the  door.  In  alarm,  I  felt 
that  Japanese  fetters  were  about  to  be  put  upon 
me,  when  he  lifted  his  hand  and  said:  "Oh!  the 
Princess  Sophia!  Princess  Sophia!  My  God! 
What  are  you  doing  here,  Madame  la  Princesse? 
Go  back  to  the  ship.  Quick!  Quick!  It  is  too 
dangerous,  too  dangerous.  You  cannot  spy  here. 


AMERICA  15 

Go  quick.  I  cannot  let  you  stop.  I  cannot  go 
with  you.  It  is  too  dangerous."  As  he  clasped 

his  hands  again,  I  recognised  D 's  old  steward, 

one  who  came  to  my  rescue  many  times  in  my 
Tokyo  days,  and  once  really  saved  my  life,  when 
Paul  was  more  drunk  and  more  brutal  than  usual. 
This  steward  at  the  Legation  house  was  the  only 
one  to  whom  I  could  appeal  and  speak  openly,  and 
I  always  suspected  that  he  was  told  off  by  D — 
to  keep  an  eye  on  the  No.  2  house,  and  to  save  me, 

if  necessary.      It   was   this    faithful   M who 

concealed  Paul's  many  disappearances ;  who  found 
him  drowned  in  the  villa  lakelet  in  the  distant 
quarter  across  the  river ;  and  who  closed  my  house 
for  me,  and  got  me  away  from  Japan.  All  of 
that  past  life  came  before  me  in  successive  scenes, 
like  a  panorama.  I  stood  quite  speechless  with  all 

that  the  sudden  appearance  of  M brought 

before  me. 

M now  owns  the  large  foreign  hotel,  and, 

sending  Anna  into  the  breakfast  room,  he  himself 
served  me  in  a  private  room,  as  the  boy  passed  in 
the  dishes.  All  my  troubles  were  truly  ended. 
Ministers  and  consuls  could  not  advise  nor  do  more 

for  me  than  this  faithful  M ,  who  knew  every 

link  in  the  long  diplomatic  chain  of  events  leading 
up  to  the  war's  beginning.  He  had  seen  the 
Rosens  and  Princess  Kitty  go  away;  and  he  had 
watched  the  flag  hauled  down  from  the  Consulate. 


16  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

He  knew,  too,  all  about  the  arrangements  with  the 
French  Legation  in  Tokyo. 

That  good  soul  took  me  to  the  bank  and  got  me 
money  on  my  London  letter.  "Keep  your  English 
notes  and  gold,"  he  advised,  "for  we  cannot  know 
what  may  happen.  Keep  enough  of  them  always 
with  you  to  pay  to  get  you  away,  if  you  have  to 
escape  suddenly  from  Japan."  He  took  me  to 
Tokyo,  and  we  saw  the  French  Minister,  who  at 
last  gave  me  word  of  Vladimir,  but — how  terrible. 
"He  is  on  the  hospital  list,  you  see,"  he  said,  show- 
ing me  the  paper.  "He  arrived  from  Dalny  only  a 
week  ago,  and  the  Consul  in  Kobe  came  back  from 
Matsuyama  the  day  before  yesterday,  and  sends 
me  these  reports.  He  has  without  doubt  seen 
him,  and  after  a  few  days  you  might  go  to  Kobe 
and  see  the  Consul !" 

"After  a  few  days !  Mon  Dieu!  No !  at  once, 
to-day,  by  my  same  steamer !  It  goes  to  Kobe." 

"But,  Madame,  I  have  not  any  permit  for  you 
to  see  your  husband  yet.  You  must  apply  for  it." 

"But,  your  Excellency,  I  do  not  need  any  permit 
to  see  your  Consul.  He  has  seen  my  husband.  He 
can  tell  me  of  him.  Ah !  how  could  I  wait  here  an 
hour  ?  No !  No !  It  is  cruel  to  stop  me  now. 
Let  me  go  to  Kobe  and  wait  there.  It  is  nearer. 
Let  me  go." 

The  Minister  drew  his  shoulders  a  little,  and 
then  had  me  write  an  appeal  to  the  Minister  of 


AMERICA  17 

War  to  be  permitted  to  visit  my  husband  in  the 
hospital  of  the  prisoners'  quarters  at  Matsuyama, 
and  that  I  might  be  permitted  also  to  take  up  my 
residence  at  Matsuyama,  and  have  frequent  access 
to  the  hospital.  "They  will  grant  it.  Oh,  yes. 
I  am  quite  sure  of  it.  Be  quite  tranquil,"  he  said. 

All  this  took  time,  and  we  drove  rapidly  back 
to  the  station,  past  a  long  open  park  space  beside 
the  moat,  now  bare  of  its  lotus  plants,  in  a  glare 
of  light  and  heat  insupportable.  The  thought  of 
Vladimir,  wounded  and  in  a  prison  hospital,  drove 
everything  from  my  mind,  and  I  but  vaguely  re- 
member what  was  said  and  done  in  the  Chancery, 
nor  did  I  notice  what  we  passed  as  we  hastened 
for  our  returning  train.  Great  buildings,  as  in  a 
European  capital,  stretched  along  vast  park 
spaces;  and  I  remember  seeing,  as  if  in  a  dream, 
as  if  in  a  mirage  in  the  noon  heat  waves,  the 
quaint,  little,  white  towers  perched  high  on  the 
castle  walls. 

"Look !"  said  M ,  who  rode  facing  me.  And 

there  was  the  familiar  old  Legation  building,  with 
its  loggiaed  verandah,  the  steep,  green  garden, 
the  rustic  parasol  of  a  summer  house  at  the  angle 
of  the  compound  overlooking  the  old  parade 
ground.  How  often  did  we  stand  there  laughing 
until  weak  at  the  drill  of  the  would-be  army,  the 
little  manikin  caricatures  of  European  troops 
going  through  goose-step  marches !  I  cannot  yet 


18  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

understand  or  find  the  clue  to  the  miraculous 
creation  of  the  formidable  army  they  must  really 
have  in  the  field,  when  I  remember  the  travesty  of 
manoeuvres  that  used  to  take  place  on  the  Hibiya 
parade  ground.  Our  old  Legation  was  shuttered 
and  silent,  the  flagstaff  bare,  the  grille  closed,  and 
a  policeman  in  a  white  uniform  sat  in  a  tiny  sentry 
box  by  the  momban's  house.  It  was  a  sad  sight. 

Oh!  War!  War!  how  cruel  and  unnecessary 
are  the  sufferings  you  bring  in  your  train! 

Oh !  Bezobrazoff !  Bezobrazoff !  What  have  you 
not  brought  down  upon  the  hapless  sovereign  who 
trusted  you?  And  upon  his  innocent  subjects! 
All  Vladimir's  worst  forebodings,  since  the  day 
he  followed  the  timid  Nicholas  in  Alexander's 
funeral  train,  have  more  than  come  true.  To 
think  that  Russia,  with  her  great  destiny,  should 
come  to  this ! — Halted  in  her  great  march  to  the 
Pacific  by  these  puny  people ! 


CHAPTER  III 

JAPAN 

Sunday,  July  24th. 

TT  was  late  in  the  afternoon  before  we  could  get 
•••  ashore  at  Kobe  and  reach  the  French  Con- 
sulate. The  tri-colour  of  la  Republique  seemed  as 
dear  to  me  as  our  own,  as  it  lifted  now  and  then 
in  the  faint  south  wind  that  blew  up  the  Inland 
Sea.  My  own  excitement  must  have  moved  the 
door-man,  for  he  abruptly  ushered  me  into  the 
cabinet  where  the  Consul  was  quietly  writing  at  a 
desk. 

"Madame?"  said  the  Consul,  rising  to  bow  and 
receiving  my  card  inquiringly.  But  I  could  not 
command  my  voice,  and  at  last  he  spoke.  "Well! 
I  see  it  is  Madame  von  Theill,  for  whom  M.  le 
Colonel  has  asked  at  Matsuyama.  I  had  the 
pleasure  to  meet  him  but  a  few  days  ago.  He  is 
improving,  they  say,  since  his  arrival,  and  since 
he  learned  that  you  were  coming  from  Russia. 
It  is  a  very  long  journey  that  you  have  made. 
You  must  telegraph  him  now  from  Kobe." 

"I  have,  I  have.  But  what — what — tell,  tell  me 
quickly  the  news  of  him,  I  implore  you." 

19 


20  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

"Calm  yourself,  Madame.  He  is  ill,  he  will  re- 
cover. He  has  suffered  much,  but  he  is  safely  in 
the  best  hands  now.  A  few  wounds,  some  flesh 
wounds,  you  know.  Many  bandages  and  all  that, 
but  he  is  not  in  the  quarter  of  the  serious  cases. 
His  arm  does  not  permit  him  to  write,  but  he  talks 
with  much  spirit,  and  he  has  begged  me  to  charge 
myself  with  you  when  you  shall  have  arrived  in 
Kobe. 

"Oh !  Yes !  You  can  go  to  Matsuyama  and 
live  there  near  him,  and  they  will  let  you  visit  him 
each  day.  But  first  you  must  have  a  permit  from 
the  Minister  of  War.  Have  you  such?  No? 
Then  you  must  wait  until  it  arrives,  and  in  the 
meantime  you  can  arrange  for  your  menage  in 
Matsuyama.  There  are  no  foreign  hotels  there, 
in  fact  no  good  tea  houses.  There  is  a  little  com- 
munity of  American  Protestant  missionaries,  and 
they  will  aid  you." 

I  told  how  M was  arranging  for  a  courier- 
boy  and  cook,  and  that  my  maid  was  a  bonne 
a  toute  faire  herself,  along  with  her  many  talents, 
and  I  begged  to  go  at  once. 

"But,  be  tranquil,  Madame.  First,  the  per- 
mission. Then  the  steamer  which  will  go  from 
Kobe  to  the  ports  of  lyo  province.  There  will  be 
one  on  Monday  evening,  and  for  that  you  must 
wait.  It  is  only  five  days,  and  you  can  send  a 
telegram,  and  get  direct  answer  from  M.  le 


JAPAN  21 

Colonel.  Ah !  what  pleasure  for  all  those  poor 
exiles  to  have  you  arrive !  It  will  be  a  day  of  fete 
in  Matsuyama  for  them  to  see  a  countrywoman 
again." 

And  then  I  dragged  through  long  days,  and 
longer  nights,  of  suffocating  heat.  But,  if  it  was 
hot  for  me  in  the  foreign  hotel,  with  all  the 
accustomed  comforts  of  Europe,  what  could  it  be 
for  my  poor  sufferer  so  far  away  at  the  end  of 
the  Inland  Sea?  Each  morning  I  went  to  the 
Consulate  to  ask  if  the  permission  had  come.  Each 
morning,  I  sent  a  telegram  to  Vladimir,  bought 
more  stores  anpl  supplies.  After  all  that  Vladimir 
has  endured  in  Manchuria,  and  suffered  since,  no 
amount  of  luxury  can  atone. 

It  seemed  a  good  promise  for  other  agrements 
of  civilisation,  when  the  Consul  told  me  I  need  not 
take  lamps,  since  they  had  the  electric  light  in 
Matsuyama.  It  seemed  hard  to  believe  that  such 
a  little  place  on  the  map,  away  down  in  the  prov- 
inces of  Shikoku  Island,  could  be  entirely  up  to 
date  like  that. 

I  was  so  dazed,  so  distracted  that  brief  morning 
in  Tokyo,  that  I  hardly  noticed  Japan, — the  new 
Japan — this  modern  Japan  that  has  come  up  like 
magic  in  the  years  of  my  absence.  There  are  the 
same  bare-legged  coolies  in  mushroom  hats  running 
their  jinrikishas  as  before,  but  they  run  beside 
electric  trams  now;  and  we  saw  more  carriages 


22  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

on  the  street  those  few  hours  in  Tokyo  than  <ve 
used  to  see  in  a  week  or  a  month.  The  Japanese 
people  continue  to  wear  their  own  national  dress 
more  than  I  had  expected  they  would,  and  the 
women  still  run  around  with  their  babies  tied  fast 
to  their  backs,  and  other  babies  play  in  the  streets 
with  still  younger  babies  tied  to  their  backs.  It 
is  a  quaint,  picturesque,  charming  Japan,  to  one 
who  looks  only  at  the  tableaux  of  street  life  and 
sees  no  further.  But  each  time  that  I  see  here  a 
Japanese  soldier  in  uniform,  something  strikes  me 
stone  still — my  heart  stops,  a  terrible  sense  of 
dread,  some  kind  of  fear  overpowers  me;  a  sick- 
ening revolt  at  the  idea  of  Vladimir  shot,  struck, 
wounded,  and  dragged  in  triumph,  as  a  trophy  of 
war,  by  such  another  soldier  as  that!  Oh,  it  is 
maddening,  sickening,  horrible,  humiliating,  im- 
possible. I  never  thought — no  one  can  think — of 
these  people  as  soldiers  in  the  field,  at  war,  like  real 
soldiers,  like  the  troops  of  a  European  country. 
And  to  be  defeated  by  an  army  of  these  brown 
toys !  Europeans  to  be  held  prisoners,  helpless, 
beyond  all  remotest  chance  of  escape  by  such  Lilli- 
putians as  these !  It  is  too  much !  War  is  fearful, 
war  is  hell  indeed,  as  the  Americans  say.  Many 
French  people,  in  1870,  suffered  misery  and 
agonies  of  humiliation  in  being  defeated  and  im- 
prisoned by  the  enemy — but  it  was  not  a  humilia- 
tion like  this.  Not  this.  Not  this.  I  am  sure  I 


JAPAN  23 

could  stand  it  better  if  Vladimir  were  imprisoned 
anywhere  else — by  Germans,  English,  or  Austri- 
ans,  for  they  are  our  own  race — even  in  Turkey, 
for  the  Turks  are  nearer  to  us,  to  me,  to  our 
customs,  to  the  ways  of  Europe,  of  the  West. 

Yesterday,  a  train  of  soldiers  on  their  way  to 
the  front  was  stopped  on  the  railway  embankment 
in  the  midst  of  the  foreign  settlement.  There  was 
a  soldier's  head  or  several  heads  out  of  each  win- 
dow; all  were  in  new  uniforms  waving  flags;  and 
the  streets  were  crowded  with  people  waving  more 
flags  and  cheering  them — cheering  them,  with  that 
peculiar  Banzai!  Banzai!  Banzai!  which  they 
always  shout  with  a  rising  note,  both  arms  up- 
lifted, as  if  it  were  an  invocation.  It  is  as  thrill- 
ing, as  intense  and  vibrant  of  the  martial  spirit  as 
the  "Aux  Armes!  Aux  Armes!"  of  the  Marseillaise, 
and  while  under  other  conditions,  in  another  war, 
elsewhere,  it  might  fire  me  with  a  splendid,  joyful 
enthusiasm,  it  deals  me  now  blow  upon  blow,  gives 
me  shock,  and  sickening  sense  of  misery.  The 
cheers  of  a  conqueror — of  a  triumphant  people! 
and  we!  The  Russians!  the  conquered  ones!  De- 
feated by  Asiatics ! 

I  find  myself  often  wondering  if  in  a  few  weeks 
I  shall  not  be  in  Kobe  again  under  other  circum- 
stances, cheering  Russian  troop-trains  as  they  roll 
through  the  country  and  on  to  Tokyo !  General 
Kuropatkin  has  promised  that  he  will  dictate  the 


24  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

terms  of  the  treaty  of  peace  in  Tokyo,  and 
Admiral  Alexeieff  has  promised  every  one,  for  a 
year  past,  that  he  would  give  a  New  Year's  ball 
in  the  Tokyo  palace.  Some  sudden  coup  may  even 
effect  this.  God  grant  it  come  soon  ! 

But  will  anything  ever  atone  to  me  or  to  Vladi- 
mir for  his  sufferings,  and  the  agonies  of  humili- 
ation of  this  present  situation?  For  no  matter 
how  short  a  time  it  endures  this  Matsuyama  in- 
cident in  our  lives  is  already  graved  and  ground 
into  the  depths  of  my  soul,  with  chagrin  and 
bitterness  unspeakable. 


Tuesday,  July  26th. 

The  official  permit  arrived.  The  Consul  him- 
self brought  it  to  me,  and  committing  me  to  the 
charge  of  his  assistant,  embarked  me  on  the  tiny 
steamer.  It  was  a  suffocating  afternoon.  All  the 
harbour  was  a  grey  blue,  the  hills  were  steeped  in 
sodden  grey  and  violet  haze  instead  of  shadows, 
and  the  very  sky  sulked  in  a  dull,  streaked  canopy 
of  weary  clouds. 

The  Consul  and  his  assistant  looked  amazement 
at  the  mountain  of  boxes  the  courier  was  guard- 
ing. "Have  you  the  intention  of  living  in  Matsu- 
yama forever?"  was  the  question.  "God  forbid!" 
my  fervent  answer. 

The   Consul  himself   was   sending   down   three 


JAPAN  25 

pianos,  a  violin,  a  mandolin,  and  many  stores — tea, 
red  wine,  and  cognac  for  the  miserables,  so  that 
all  the  visible  cargo  of  the  vessel  seemed  ours. 

It  was  a  trim  modern  little  ship,  with  electric 
lights,  electric  bells,  and  boys,  in  the  uniform  arid 
buttons  of  the  European  pages,  to  wait  on  one — 
and  to  prevent  one  from  defiling  the  soft  green 
velvet  carpet  of  the  salon  with  one's  base,  Euro- 
pean shoes.  In  the  comfortable  straw  chairs  on 
the  open  deck  we  found  air  to  breathe,  when  the 
little  steamer  got  under  way  through  the  darkness 
that  fell  so  fast.  After  the  long  summer  evenings 
of  Russia  I  had  just  left,  there  was  always  some- 
thing sinister  and  uncanny  in  the  early  blackness 
that  came  upon  the  world  of  Japan,  after  the  last 
clear  beam  of  the  sinking  sun.  It  was  always  to 
me  like  an  eclipse,  or  the  terrible  darkness  that 
fell  upon  Pompeii  at  midday.  We  stopped  in  the 
night  once  or  twice,  and  chattering  passengers 
clattered  off  and  on  in  their  wooden  clogs.  The 
mosquitoes  sang  until  my  tiny  white  cabin  rang 
and  resounded  like  the  box  of  a  violin,  and,  at  last, 
a  misty,  pale-pink  and  pearl  dawn  relieved  me. 

It  was  a  day  of  enchantment  that  followed,  if  I 
had  been  in  a  mood  to  let  myself  be  enchanted. 
We  floated  over  silver  seas  and  between  emerald 
islets.  It  was  a  daydream  of  delicate,  exquisite 
colour,  the  most  poetic  of  landscape  panoramas. 
We  slipped  into  the  tiniest  harbours  and  through 


26  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

the  narrowest  channels.  It  was  Norway  in  minia- 
ture, the  Lofotens  through  the  other  end  of  an 
opera  glass ;  but,  at  thought  of  the  Lofotens,  a 
lump  came  in  my  throat  and  Vladimir's  face  swam 
before  my  eyes  blinded  with  tears.  Ah,  Vladimir ! 
We  were  happy  then.  We  did  not  dream  of 
this. 

The  sea  broadened  out  to  lakes,  it  narrowed  to 
the  merest  canals,  between  steep  shores  terraced 
far  up  the  hillside  with  green  rice  fields ;  and  a  row 
of  pine  trees  was  silhouetted  on  each  of  the  sky- 
lines of  the  hills,  like  the  stiff  mane  of  a  Norwegian 
pony.  Each  toy  town  or  village  had  its  granite 
sea  wall  and  mole,  its  lighthouse  and  harbour 
buoys — civilisation  in  miniature,  compact,  com- 
plete. White  police  stations  showed  in  the  thick 
of  the  grey -walled,  black- roofed  houses,  and  the 
gabled  gateways  and  great  sweeping  roofs  of  tem- 
ples rose  from  dense  groves  of  old  pines  and 
camphor  trees.  Heavens !  how  romantically, 
theatrically,  impossibly  picturesque  it  all  was ! 
Ideal  Arcadia — dreamland — a  world's  treasury  of 
scenery.  And  I  looked  on  with  dull  eyes  and  a 
cool  pulse,  my  eye  mechanically  registering,  my 
brain  automatically  judging  and  awarding  the 
degree  of  excellence  to  the  scene  from  long  habit. 
How  different  has  been  my  attitude,  how  wild  my 
enthusiasm  in  Norway,  the  Crimea,  the  Caucasus, 
and  in  dear  Italy,  where,  with  Vladimir,  there  was 


JAPAN  27 

the  advantage  of  seeing  with  four  eyes  instead  of 
with  two  eyes. 

We  hardly  stopped  before  these  towns  of  Lilli- 
put.  The  whistle  shrieked,  the  engine  puffed  a 
great  sigh  and  stopped,  and  passengers  and 
cargo  went  over  one  side  into  sampans  and  came 
up  the  other.  We  whistled  and  went  on,  the  sam- 
pans lurching  in  the  sudden  wake.  It  was  all  so 
admirably  done,  so  quietly  and  promptly,  with 
such  exact  cooperation,  that  it  began  to  dawn 
upon  me  how  the  army  of  pigmies  have  come  to 
humiliate  the  army  of  giants.  In  contrast  with 
these  tidy  and  remote  little  villages  of  fishermen 
and  rice  farmers  of  the  Inland  Sea,  far  from  any 
foreign  settlement,  I  recalled  the  muddy  streets 
and  tumbledown  houses,  the  dirt,  misery,  and 
ignorance  of  our  pigstyes  of  Russian  villages, 
even  quite  near  to  Petersburg  and  Moscow. 
Hardly  any  village  in  China  is  as  filthy,  the  people 
as  ignorant  and  in  as  low  a  condition  as  in  that 
Tula  village  of  Yasnaya  Polyana  beside  the 
country  home  of  our  great  reformer  and  humbug, 
Count  L.  Tolstoi.  I  wonder  why  the  procession 
of  foreign  visitors  who  go  to  Yasnaya  Polyana, 
who  lavish  adulation  and  hysterical  praises  upon 
that  crass  socialist  and  mischief-maker  of  his  day, 
never  think  to  look  around  them  and  use  their 
reasoning  powers.  Would  it  not  be  the  logical 
thing  for  Yasnaya  Polyana  to  be  the  model  village 


28  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

of  Russia?  Something  cleaner  than  Edam  or 
Markem?  A  little  of  that  magnificent  humani- 
tarianism  and  benevolence  poured  upon  that  in- 
sanitary village  on  his  own  estates  would  be  more 
practical,  it  seems  to  me,  than  the  thin  treacle  of 
it  spread  over  the  whole  universe.  Talk  is  cheap 
in  Yasnaya  Polyana,  and  the  Grand  Poseur  plays 
his  part  magnificently.  Every  visitor  goes  away 
completely  hypnotised,  especially  the  Americans 
with  their  frothing  about  equality  and  the  uni- 
versal brotherhood  of  man.  Universal  grand- 
mother! All  men  are  just  as  equal  as  all  noses  or 
mouths  are  equal.  The  world  gets  older  but  learns 
nothing;  and  it  cherishes  delusions,  and  the  same 
ones,  just  as  it  did  in  the  time  of  the  Greek 
philosophers.  Leo  Tolstoi  might  well  have  lived  in 
a  tub,  or  carried  a  lantern  by  day,  like  the  most 
sensational  and  theatrical  of  the  ancients.  He  is 
only  a  past  master  of  la  reclame,  of  the  art  of 
advertising.  The  moujik  blouse  and  those  delight- 
ful tableaux  of  a  real  nobleman  shoemaking  and 
haymaking,  make  his  books  sell.  That  is  all. 
And,  under  the  masquerading  blouse  of  the 
humanitarian  is  the  fine  and  perfumed  linen  of  the 
dandy.  Leo  Tolstoi,  the  Beau  Brummel  of  his 
corps,  in  my  father's  day — the  dandy  in  domino 
to-day. 


JAPAN  29 

July  28th. 

Alas !  I  am  dragging  this,  as  that  day  dragged 
its  hours  along  on  that  ideal  summer  sea.  The 
Vice-Consul  read,  but  I  could  not  put  my  mind  on 
print.  I  found  myself  at  the  foot  of  a  page  with- 
out having  read  it;  my  eye  had  mechanically 
traversed  words  while  my  mind  was  elsewhere — 
thinking,  thinking,  trying  to  picture  precisely  the 
situation  that  would  meet  my  eye  at  the  journey's 
end,  for  I  could  not  bore  my  companion  continu- 
ally with  my  questions  about  Matsuyama. 

At  another  time,  what  a  voyage  of  delight  that 
might  have  been!  Yachting  on  the  Greek  coast 
does  not  give  one  so  much  of  pure  landscape 
beauty.  In  one  broad  stretch  of  waters,  the  little 
steamer,  so  like  a  yacht,  coursed  head  on  to  a  green 
mountain  slope,  that  showed  at  last  a  green  fold 
in  its  front.  There  opened  a  channel,  as  we  turned 
a  right  angle,  and  we  entered  it,  passing  a  quaint 
little  combination  of  lighthouse  and  temple 
clamped  to  its  perpendicular  rock  angles.  We 
swept  into  a  channel  as  narrow  as  a  river,  where 
the  tide  raced  and  eddied  in  rapids;  we  swung 
around  more  green  headlands  and  sharp  corners, 
and  came  to  in  the  fairway  between  two  little 
towns  whose  black-tiled  roofs  ran  high  up  the  hill- 
side. Enormous  temples  spread  their  great 
masses  of  roof  tiles  amidst  billows  of  densest 
foliage.  And  the  activity  of  these  little  places! 


30  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

Hundreds  of  picturesque  junks  and  hundreds  of 
schooner-rigged  craft  showed  two  stages  in  navi- 
gation, and  flotillas  of  small  steamers  rested  at 
buoys,  while  a  dozen  whistled  and  clanked  their 
way  in  and  out.  It  was  diverting  and  so  beauti- 
fully picturesque.  Only  then  I  remembered  and 
thought  of  my  camera  deep  down  in  one  of  my 
boxes.  I  had  been  too  busy  and  indifferent  to 
care  to  use  it  in  Kobe,  and  it  was  packed  with  the 
film  roll  in  it  where  Natalie  and  I  had  snapped 
the  tableaux  at  our  garden  fete  for  the  Red  Cross 
at  Tsarskoe  Cercle.  But  at  the  mention  of 
camera,  the  Vice-Consul  started  violently. 

"My  God,  Madame,  a  thousand  times,  No !  No ! 
No!  Do  not  ever  think  of  a  camera,  much  less 
dare  to  use  it,  in  Japan.  In  this  Inland  Sea,  all 
this  beautiful  landscape  so  ideal,  these  hills  so 
green  and  smiling,  all  is  fortified.  It  is  crowded 
with  forts  and  guns.  All  are  concealed,  hidden 
under  these  curtains  of  foliage,  these  vines  and 
terraces,  in  fair  mask  of  beauty,  and  they  wish  no 
one  to  know  it.  If  the  most  innocent  traveller 
points  a  photographic  machine,  they  think  him  a 
spy  who  has  some  knowledge  of  their  secrets.  I 
warn  you  to  never  use  your  machine  while  you  are 
here." 

This  idea  of  the  horrors  of  war,  or  rather  of  the 
engines  of  war  that  produce  the  horror  being  con- 
cealed in  the  midst  of  all  this  peaceful,  smiling 


JAPAN  81 

beauty  gave  me  a  chill  of  disillusionment.  I  had 
been  saying  before  that  it  was  altogether  too  per- 
fect to  be  real,  too  theatrical  to  be  useful  and 
economic  in  common  life.  Now  it  seemed  to  me 
that  all  was  false,  all  illusion,  all  painted  scenery ; 
and  the  deceptive  landscape  palled  upon  me.  I 
had  no  thought  save  how  a  sheet  of  flame  and 
white  smoke  might  puff  from  a  green  hillside  and 
our  tiny  ship  go  to  splinters  in  a  second  like  poor 
Makaroff's. 

We  went  on  through  islands  and  more  islands, 
and  at  noon  came  upon  an  astonishing  sight.  In 
the  midst  of  little  villages,  tiny  steamers,  and  slow- 
sailing  junks,  we  were  suddenly  introduced  to  a 
great  harbour  filled  with  foreign  ships,  and  ringed 
with  great  factories,  workshops,  and  chimneys. 
Ten,  twenty,  forty,  fifty  ships  came  in  sight.  The 
long  black  ships  were  smoking  lightly  from  every 
funnel;  cargo  was  going  in  and  out;  and  flotillas 
of  bateaux  mouche  flew  over  the  water.  It  was 
busy,  lively,  inspiring.  "But  what  is  this?  What 
new  port  do  we  find  here?  This  is  as  great  a 
port  as  Kobe,"  I  said. 

"It  is  Ujina.  These  are  army  transports 
taking  supplies  and  troops,  and  guns  too — as  you 
can  see — over  to  Manchuria.  Even  now,  those 
cannon,  which  they  are  hoisting  to  that  ship's 
side,  may  be  going  to  be  turned  upon  the  brave 
men  at  Port  Arthur." 


32  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

I  groaned,  half  sick  at  the  thought,  and  then 
was  drawn  to  watch  men  in  white  kimonos  and 
pastry-cooks'  caps  creeping  slowly  down  the  side 
of  a  white  hospital  ship,  the  Red  Cross  painted  on 

its  funnel.  "Are  those?  Are  those "  I  could 

not  finish  the  question. 

"No,  no,  Madame,  they  are  only  Japanese 
wounded.  The  launches  are  towing  now  a  queue 
of  hospital  sampans  away  toward  the  city.  They 
take  their  own  wounded  to  the  hospitals  in 
Hiroshima,  over  there.  The  poor  Russians  are 
separated  at  the  quarantine  depot  and  sent  to 
Matsuyama.  The  Japanese  do  it  well,  you  see, 
which  is  merciful.  They  have  imitated  all  the 
ways  of  Europe  very  cleverly." 

On  the  shore  there  were  sheds  and  sheds  in 
interminable  rows,  and  coolies  ran  like  files  of  ants 
with  bales  and  boxes  on  their  shoulders  to  drop 
them  in  cargo  lighters. 

"Ammunition,"  said  the  Vice-Consul,  pointing 
to  a  lighter  filled  with  small  square  deal  boxes. 
And  the  idea  gave  me  a  sickening  chill.  "Those 
rolls  you  know  are  rice,  of  course.  And  that  is 
charcoal,  so  that  camp  fires  shall  not  show  smoke. 
And  those  are  cavalry  horses.  The  Cossack  of 
Japan  is  none  too  well  mounted,  you  see."  And 
sorry  beasts  they  were,  tended  by  small  jockeys  in 
uniform. 

At  last,  we  were  seeing  real  signs  of  war,  for  in 


JAPAN  33 

Tokyo,  not  a  uniform,  not  a  sentry,  not  a  sign  of 
the  army  had  been  visible,  any  more  than  in 
democratic,  peaceful  America.  In  Kobe,  the 
soldier  was  rarely  seen.  He  most  often  went  past 
on  railway  trains  at  long  intervals,  and  the  war 
had  seemed  to  me  so  unreal,  so  imaginary  and 
mythical,  even  here  in  Japan,  that  my  mind  was 
strained  in  trying  to  comprehend  and  realise 
things.  But  here  on  the  Inland  Sea  war  was  real, 
visible,  tangible.  There  were  uniforms  every- 
where, and  swarms  of  men  in  khaki,  who  were  in- 
visible against  the  long  lines  of  unpainted  ware- 
houses and  straw-covered  stores.  Soldiers  stood 
and  gaped  at  us  from  the  landing  stage,  and 
gendarmes,  with  enormously  long  swords,  paraded, 
keen-eyed,  up  and  down  the  planking  to  see  what 
they  might  discover,  whom  they  might  arrest.  A 
military  officer  came  down  the  pier,  every  one  bow- 
ing low  and  saluting;  his  face  set  in  an  in- 
scrutable smile,  his  salutes  automatic,  his  breast 
covered  with  medals,  a  great  sabre  clanking  beside 
him.  "It  is  a  riding  general,"  said  the  courier 
wisely;  and  the  cavalry  leader,  with  his  staff,  dis- 
appeared in  the  little  green  velvet  salon.  "He 
goes  to  Matsuyama  to  look-see  the  Russian 
horios.  Then  he  goes  to  Tairen  soon,  on  that  ship 
over  there.  Her  name  is  Tairen  Maru  now,  but 
she  used  to  be  Russia's  ship  Catherine" 

"Yes,"   said   the   Vice-Consul  drily.      "It   is   a 


34  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

popular  tour  now  to  go  sightseeing  to  Matsu- 
yama,  to  regard  there  the  horios,  the  prisoners. 
And  the  ship,  you  know  it?  You  heard  about  it 
doubtless?  It  is  the  Ekaterinoslav."  And  there 
was  our  huge  volunteer  ship,  painted  over  with 
huge,  white  Japanese  ideographs !  And  called  a 
Maru.  Could  anything  cut  one  deeper  than  to  see 
one's  own  ships  in  bondage?  And  the  horios!  the 
prisoners!  Vladimir  a  horio!  And  the  dragoons 
going  over  to  look  at  the  horios,  as  if  they  were 
in  a  Zoo ! 

"Where  is  this  Tairen?     In  Korea?"     I  asked. 

"Tairen?  Tairen?  Why,  it  is  only  the  Chinese 
Talien.  It  is  De  Witte's  town,  Dalny,"  said  the 
Vice-Consul.  "They  have  renamed  it,  too." 

In  a  few  minutes'  steaming  we  entered  another 
bay  whose  shores  smoked  with  the  chimneys  of 
many  red  brick  factories.  Verily,  this  is  a  new 
Japan  with  a  vengeance.  "The  Naval  Station, 
the  arsenal  of  Kure,"  said  the  Vice-Consul;  and 
the  clatter  of  ship-builders'  hammers  filled  the  air. 
All  this  activity,  all  this  European  method  and 
progress  reduced  me  to  dumb  wonder  and  despair. 
Who  had  ever  dreamed  there  was  such  a  Japan 
hidden  away  in  the  little  crannies  of  the  Inland 
Sea?  Could  the  Legation  in  Tokyo  have  known 
this  and  not  warned  them  in  Petersburg?  What 
was  Wogack  doing?  Surely,  there  was  not  such 
an  Ujina  and  Kure  here  in  those  days  when  we 


JAPAN  35 

used  to  laugh  so  at  Japan  playing  soldier  before 
our  windows !  How  often  did  our  visitors  say 
when  looking  on:  "Do  the  little  monkeys  think 
they  are  ever  going  to  have  a  real  war,  that  they 
need  keep  up  this  farce  of  being  soldiers  and  drill- 
ing?" And  I  can  remember  when  an  English 
military  man  said  the  Japanese  were  like  the 
Ghoorkas  in  India,  the  best  fighting  material  in 

the  world,  that  D said  that  "the  whole  little 

Japanese  army  could  not  stand  against  one  regi- 
ment of  Cossacks,  if  they  ever  came  over  to 
Saghalien,  with  their  grievances.  They  would 
sweep  them  off.  Ride  them  down,  like  that!"  and 

D brushed  cigar  ashes  off  a  lacquer  table  top 

with  a  flip  of  his  fingers.  And  now,  what  have  our 
dreaded  Cossacks  done  since  the  war  began,  but 
retire?  Ride  away,  ride  fast  and  far  from  these 
wicked  little  yellow  mites !  Brobdingnagians  on 
horses  fleeing  from  the  Lilliputians  on  foot!  Oh! 
shame  on  them ! 


CHAPTER  IV 
MATSUYAMA,  THE  PINE-CLAD  HILL 

Sunday,  July  31st. 

FOR  all  my  life  I  shall  remember  the  series  of 
petty  incidents  that  marked  that  last  day  of 
my  long  journey  from  Petersburg.  We  seemed 
to  drag  our  way  slowly  across  the  last  stretch  of 
azure  sea,  so  like  a  mountain-girt  lake.  In  the  end 
we  came  slowly  toward  the  green  Shikoku  shore, 
where  a  round  hill  stood  up  from  the  rice  plain, 
midway  between  the  mountain  wall  and  the  sea. 
It  was  crowned  with  one  of  those  fantastic 
Japanese  chateaux,  all  white  walls  and  black 
gabled  roofs,  cutting  across  and  piled  one  above 
another. 

"Matsuyama!"  said  the  Vice-Consul  at  its  first 
appearance;  and  then  I  could  not  take  my  eyes 
from  it — from  the  goal  of  my  journey,  which  had 
reached  more  than  half  around  the  earth.  For 
weeks  and  weeks  only  that  name  had  been  on  my 
mind  and  in  my  thoughts,  and  at  last  it  had  be- 
come reality.  I  was  overcome  with  emotion  and 
excitement,  with  almost  fear  of  what  the  crown- 
ing moment  might  reveal.  If  my  gaze  could  only 
pierce  through  those  faraway,  fairy-like  roofs  and 

36 


MATSUYAMA,  THE  PINE-CLAD  HILL     37 

walls,  and  see  Vladimir  lying  there,  what  ease, 
what  respite  from  my  long  tension  of  anxiety  ! 

"Perhaps  he  watches  the  steamer  approach,"  I 
ventured  to  suggest. 

"But,  no,  Madame,  the  poor  sufferers,  none  of 
the  Russians,  are  up  there  at  the  chateau.  They 
are  in  barracks  on  the  level  ground,  at  the  left, 
quite  at  the  foot  of  the  hill.  You  cannot  see  the 
city  yet.  It  is  a  ring  city,  quite  surrounding  the 
chateau,  and  we  must  cross  three  or  four  miles  of 
rice  plain  by  railway  train.  Such  a  railway  !  The 
tiniest  miniscule  of  a  railway  —  a  string  of  net- 
sukes  is  the  train.  I  might  hang  the  locomotive 
on  my  watch  chain  —  a  breloque  merely.  So  droll." 

I  was  breathless  with  excitement,  as  we  landed 
and  walked  up  the  bank  to  the  station.  I  wanted 
to  run,  to  fly  to  the  prison,  at  once.  The  minia- 
ture train  puffed  in,  and  a  populace  in  blue  and 
white  garments  dismounted.  I  looked  at  them, 
and  they  all  looked  at  me,  especially  the  boy- 
vendor  of  cigarettes,  whose  stolid,  bovine  stare  in 
my  face  for  full  ten  minutes  irritated  me  beyond 
words.  Then  we  took  our  places  and  the  train 
ran  slowly  and  smokily  toward  the  chateau  on  the 
high  hill. 


I  shut  my  eyes,  and  held  the  side  of  the  jin- 
rikisha   tightly,    as    we    coursed    through    a    few 


38  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

streets,  past  a  field  and  some  bare  spaces,  and 
stopped  at  an  open  gate,  where  sentries  stood 
with  muskets  and  bandoliers.  This  was  the  first 
real  soldier  of  the  victorious  army  on  actual 
duty  that  I  had  seen.  He  was  a  hard-faced  old 
peasant  in  a  patched  and  faded  khaki  uniform. 
The  Vice-Consul  presented  his  card  and  my  per- 
mit, spoke  amiably  in  Japanese,  and  the  sentry 
grunted,  "Huh!"  Another  old  trooper  took  the 
cards,  fingered  them,  showed  them  to  his  mates  at 
the  guard-house  door,  and  slowly  took  his  bow- 
legged  way  across  the  bare  earthern  court  to  a 
row  of  wooden  warehouses  or  barrack  buildings. 
All  was  new  and  raw,  and  carpenters  were  at  work 
on  other  new  buildings,  at  which  the  Vice-Consul 
lifted  his  shoulders.  "More  barracks.  More  bar- 
racks. Mon  Dleu,  again  more  prisoners!" 

It  was  a  strange  experience  to  me,  this  standing 
outside  the  gates,  with  rustics  in  the  road,  and 
uniformed  rustics  within  the  gate,  staring  at  me 
stolidly,  woodenly,  like  so  many  ruminant  cattle — 
in  the  same  Japan  where  every  gate  used  to  swing 
wide  open  for  us,  every  head  to  bend  low,  politely, 
respectfully,  when  we  touched  the  circle  of  the 
government. 

"But  is  it  possible  that  these  people  do  not 
know  that  you  are  the  Vice-Consul  of  France? 
Have  you  not  been  here  before?  And  did  we  not 
telegraph  the  coming  in  advance?" 


MATSUYAMA,  THE  PINE-CLAD  HILL     39 

"Oh,  yes.  But  be  tranquil,  Madame,  a  little  of 
patience.  These  are  the  conquerors,  you  know. 
And  since  the  Oriental  cannot  impress  us  by 
making  a  grand  tour  of  many  apartments,  we  shall 
arrive  at  the  sensation  of  awe  by  waiting  in 
humility  at  the  outer  entrance." 

The  bow-legged  peasant  in  uniform  returned 
towards  the  gate,  stopped  at  a  distance,  and 
beckoned  to  us  with  his  fingers  to  advance — quite 
as  you  summon  a  porter  at  a  railway  station.  I 
was  fortified  then  for  anything  that  might  happen 
in  this  changed  Japan,  my  heart  beating  to  suffo- 
cation, and  my  face  burning  with  colour.  We 
went  along  an  endless  covered  piazza  to  the  door 
of  the  Chancery,  a  bare  room,  where  clerks  with- 
out coats  wrote  at  many  wooden  tables,  and  the 
air  was  that  of  a  furnace  between  thin  wooden 
walls  scorching  in  the  afternoon  sun.  A  young 
Japanese  ran  forward,  with  head  erect,  in  a  bold, 
familiar  manner,  and  took  the  Vice-Consul  by  the 
hand,  to  my  utter  amazement,  and  began  stutter- 
ing a  jargon  of  bad  French.  The  Vice-Consul 
presented  him. 

"Ah,  the  companion  of  one  of  the  prisoners!" 
said  the  youth,  who  it  seems  is  the  official  inter- 
preter, thrusting  his  hand  out  from  where  he 
stood  a  few  paces  from  me.  The  tactful  French- 
man moved  forward,  seized  the  hand,  and  effusively 
shook  it  a  second  time,  and  the  blood  that  had 


40  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

been  beating  in  my  face  so  fiercely,  ebbed  back  and 
back,  and  a  chill  struck  my  heart. 

"She  must  have  a  permit,  of  course,"  said  this 
recently  uniformed  soshi,  staring  at  me  with  a 
Sangfroid  that  far  passed  the  plane  of  equality. 

"She  has  one,  which  the  guardian  at  the  gate 
has  brought  here,"  said  my  French  ally.  "It  is 
from  the  Minister  of  War,  and  I  have  yesterday 
telegraphed  explanations  to  the  Commandant,  and 
asked  that,  under  the  extreme  circumstances,  he 
will  permit  her  to  visit  her  husband  immediately 
upon  her  arrival.  Has  he  not  informed  the 
hospital?" 

"Ah !  perhaps.  Yes,  truly,  he  has.  It  is  here," 
said  the  young  autocrat,  picking  up  the  most 
prominent  written  sheet  on  his  table,  and  with  it 
my  permit  sent  in  from  the  gate.  "She  may  go 
now,"  said  the  lordly  one,  and  he  almost  waved  us 
from  his  presence,  but  not  before  the  Vice-Consul 
had  recovered  my  official  papers. 

"Have  the  goodness,  please,  to  send  some  one  to 
M.  le  Colonel  to  announce  that  Madame  has 
arrived  at  Matsuyama  and  will  soon  come  to  him. 
It  is  not  good  for  him  to  have  too  strong  a  shock," 
said  my  brave  man  of  France. 

While  a  messenger  in  mule  slippers  went  ahead, 
we  followed  slowly,  my  considerate  Frenchman 
stopping  now  and  then  for  a  few  moments,  for  I 
was  gasping  rather  than  breathing,  a  mist  filled 


MATSUYAMA,  THE  PINE-CLAD  HILL     41 

my  eyes,  and  stumbling,  I  put  out  my  other  hand 
to  steady  myself  against  the  walls  and  posts.  I 
saw  dimly  white-robed  hospital  patients  standing 
here  and  there,  saluting;  I  toiled  up  a  little  slope 
of  floor,  the  Vice-Consul  lifted  a  white  sheet  of  a 
curtain,  released  his  arm,  and  dropped  the  white 
cloth  between  us.  A  muffled,  crying  sob  :  "Sophia  ! 
Sophia!"  and  I  flung  myself  by  the  wooden 
hospital  cot  I  had  come  so  far  to  reach.  A  head, 
shapeless  with  a  swathing  of  white  bandages,  lay 
there;  and  from  it  looked  the  dear,  dark  eyes, 
but  —  shadowed  with  such  depths  of  unutter- 
able sadness,  of  woe  unspeakable,  the  mute  record 
of  pain  endured,  and  of  a  noble  soul's  humiliation, 
an  agony  more  excruciating  than  any  mere  phys- 
ical nerve  vibrations. 


Tuesday,  August  2nd. 

The  Vice-Consul  remained  two  days  making  his 
parochial  calls,  as  he  termed  it,  and  making  my 
position  for  me  with  the  Japanese  authorities. 
"It  is  beyond  all  your  experiences,  of  course,"  he 
said,  "but  it  is  better  that  I  present  you  formally 
at  headquarters  and  have  a  precise  understand- 
ing of  the  limits  to  which  you  must  constrain 
yourself.  Let  it  be  written  down  now,  how  often 
you  may  visit  the  barracks,  at  what  hours,  and 
how  long  you  may  remain;  whether  you  can  visit 


42  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

other  prisoners  in  the  city ;  if  you  can  go  beyond 
certain  limits  in  your  promenades  on  foot  and  in 
jinrikisha;  and  the  same  privilege  for  your  maid. 
Also,  let  it  be  understood  that  you  will  wish  to 
come  to  Kobe  to  replenish  stores  for  your  house- 
hold and  for  yourself.  You  will  need  a  distrac- 
tion, if  you  are  long  restrained  to  this  hot  little 
town,  and  the  recovery  of  M.  le  Colonel  you  see  is 
distant." 

The  military  Commandant,  with  whom  I  should 
have  most  relations,  was  after  the  German  mode. 
He  had  the  recurved  mustachios  of  the  Kaiser, 
guttural  jo's  and  ach's  dotted  his  remarks,  and 
when  any  one  rapped  at  the  door,  he  said  "Ho !" 
in  a  way  that  should  have  brought  a  parade 
ground  to  salute  and  attention.  It  was  agreed 
that  I  should  visit  the  barracks  from  two  until  six 
o'clock  each  day,  or  Anna  could  go  in  my  place 
for  one  hour.  I  could  have  wept  with  joy  at  this 
merciful  dispensation,  so  far  beyond  all  that  I 
had  expected.  The  Commandant  gave  me  the 
addresses  and  prices  of  four  houses,  which  I  might 
rent.  I  had  perfect  liberty  to  move  about  the 
town;  and  apparently,  the  only  restriction  put 
upon  me  was  that  all  my  letters,  correspondence, 
and  telegrams  must  suffer  the  same  censorship  as 
if  I  were  a  prisoner  of  war.  It  was  so  liberal,  just, 
and  reasonable  that  I  was  not  a  little  bewildered 
to  find  that  nothing  else  was  required.  I  was  as 


MATSUYAMA,  THE  PINE-CLAD  HILL     48 

free  as  any  tourist  or  resident  had  been  in  the  old 
passport  days  in  the  interior — as  free,  in  fact,  as 
in  Russia.  I  could  at  any  time  obtain  permits  to 
visit  the  prisoners  at  the  Town  Hall  and  other 
places  of  detention  on  the  two  visitors'  days  of 
each  week. 

I  was  at  the  gate  of  the  barracks  enclosure  at 
the  stroke  of  two  o'clock.  The  heat  was  intense, 
the  sun  glaring  down  on  the  treeless  spaces  that 
had  been  cultivated  fields  before  the  rows  of 
wooden  barracks  had  been  erected.  I  dreaded 
the  familiar  contempt  of  the  young  jackanapes  in 
the  Chancery,  but  he  was  humility  and  courtesy 
itself,  really  Japanese  after  all;  and  he  presented 
me  to  the  chief -surgeon,  a  serious  kindly  man  in 
spectacles,  who  was  of  the  manner  of  old  Japan, 
the  exquisitely  polite  and  refined  Japan  of  the 
upper  classes,  of  the  court  circle  I  used  to  know. 
I  sat  for  a  few  minutes  in  his  room  while  tea  was 
brought  and  the  courtesies  passed  between  us,  and 
then  he  went  with  me  to  Vladimir's  ward.  It  was 
a  comfort  to  have  Vladimir  in  charge  of  such  a 
man  as  this. 

"The  Herr  Colonel  is  my  most  interesting  case," 
said  the  chief  surgeon,  with  a  smile  at  this  very 
professional  view.  "I  shall  expect  him  to  improve 
rapidly  now  that  you  have  arrived  to  care  for  him. 
Have  you  had  any  nurse's  training?"  I  told  him 
and  Vladimir,  in  German,  of  all  the  serious  work 


44  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

we  had  done  in  the  Red  Cross  in  Russia,  for  our 
soldiers  at  the  front ;  of  our  lectures  and  practice 
classes,  where  we  learned  to  bandage  and  to  do 
regular  hospital  work. 

"Yes,  yes,"  he  said,  "our  Japanese  ladies  are 
doing  the  same  in  Tokyo.  Our  Empress  spends 
several  hours  every  day  in  nurse's  dress,  rolling 
bandages.  She  has  sent  several  thousand  rolls  to 
be  divided  between  the  army  and  navy,  and  our 
grateful  patients  do  really  make  miraculous  prog- 
ress when  their  wounds  are  dressed  with  imperial 
bandages.  We  have  to  mark  them  to  be  washed 
and  used,  over  and  over  again.  So  much  can  the 
mind  cure." 

I  met  all  Vladimir's  immediate  confreres,  and 
fellow  sufferers,  and  the  head  nurse  and  an  inter- 
preter conducted  me  through  the  other  wards, 
where  there  were  Russians  of  every  province,  every 
arm  of  the  service,  every  degree  of  rank,  all  suffer- 
ing from  grievous  wounds,  all  bearing  their  pain 
so  bravely.  Poor  fellows !  Poor  fellows !  And 
you  never  even  saw  Bezobrazoff  probably,  nor 
heard  of  his  wretched  old  timber  claims !  Yet,  for 
that,  you  lie  here  and  suffer,  and  go  through  life 
maimed!  For  Holy  Russia's  sake?  No.  For 
Bezobrazoff's  schemes?  Yes.  And  Alexeieff's. 
May  the  Japanese  soon  capture  him ! 

It  seems  strange  that  in  such  a  few  days  I 
should  settle  down  to  a  routine  of  living  as  natural 


MATSUYAMA,  THE  PINE-CLAD  HILL     45 

to  me  as  if  all  my  life  I  had  known  Matsuyama 
and  the  road  around  the  moat  to  the  barracks. 
My  furniture  soon  found  place  in  my  little 
Japanese  house,  which  looked  upon  the  loveliest 
little  jardinette  I  ever  saw.  There  was  a  better 
house  to  be  had,  but  it  was  far  from  the  barracks, 
in  the  so-called  court  quarter  of  the  town,  where 
the  old  daimio  had  dwelt,  and  it  had  a  yard  just 
four  feet  wide  and  twenty  feet  long.  Into  that 
ribbon  of  land,  however,  were  condensed  all  the 
features  of  a  park — thickets,  hedges,  a  pond,  a 
rocky  hillside,  a  bending  pine  and  a  pebbly  beach. 
I  have  a  clipped  camellia  hedge  twenty  feet  high 
that  shuts  out  other  roofs  and  chimney  tops,  and 
above  the  shining  camellia  wall  rises  the  pine-clad 
hill,  with  the  fantastic  castle  gables  running 
along  its  sky-line. 

My  four  lower  rooms  bound  two  sides  of  the 
garden,  the  camellia  hedge  a  third  side,  and 
the  fourth  is  an  arrangement  of  foliage  with  the 
thatched  roof  protecting  the  picturesque  stone 
well-curb  admirably  placed  for  effect.  The 
kitchen,  baths,  and  servants'  rooms  are  between 
my  living  rooms  and  the  street  wall.  I  have  six 
rooms  on  the  ground  floor  and  four  rooms  above — 
a  spacious  mansion,  as  Japanese  homes  go.  All 
rny  upper-floor  rooms  can  be  thrown  into  one,  by 
removing  the  sliding  fusuma,  and  if  the  papered 
lattices,  or  shoji,  are  removed  I  have  an  open 


46  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

pavilion,  all  three  sides  balconied  to  the  air  and 
only  one  solid  back  wall  remaining.  It  is  the  most 
ideal  of  summer  villas;  but,  if  Vladimir  were  only 
here  in  the  quiet  and  privacy  of  this  maisonette 
and  the  landscape  garden  ! 

We  cleared  out  all  of  the  soft  straw  mats  that 
hold  so  much  dust,  dampness,  and  fleas,  and  can- 
not be  walked  on  with  our  rough  foreign  shoes, 
and  laid  down  instead  the  fine  straw  matting  that 
is  made  for  the  European  market,  all  through 
these  Inland  Sea  provinces.  Beside  the  wicker 
furniture  and  beds  that  we  brought  from  Kobe, 
Anna  found  other  chairs  here,  and  a  clever  car- 
penter has  made  her  a  deep,  luxurious  sofa,  over 
whose  back  and  seat  of  laced  ropes  she  has 
fastened  soft  mattresses.  She  has  found  the  most 
artistic  blue  and  white  printed  cottons  for  cover- 
ing her  cushions  and  chairs ;  and  every  day  on  my 
return,  I  am  led  with  pride  to  some  new  creation. 
The  courier,  who  has  proved  himself  an  universal 
genius,  has  worked  with  a  zeal  equal  to  Anna's  to 
equip  us  for  comfortable  European  living,  and 

quotes  M and  his  hotel  as  the  standard  and 

paragon  he  must  satisfy.  In  Kobe,  we  rummaged 
some  really  good  old  bits  out  of  the  trash  the 
curio  shops  are  now  crammed  with,  and,  quick  to 
note  my  special  passion  for  painted  wood  doors 
and  golden  fusuma,  the  courier  has  sent  his  scouts 
out  through  the  province  to  find  more  treasures. 


MATSUYAMA,  THE  PINE-CLAD  HILL     47 

My  little  home  is  indeed  charming,  but  who  sees 
it?  Who  knows  it,  but  myself  and  Anna?  Vladi- 
mir asks  daily  about  my  maison  bijou,  and  is 
amused  by  Anna's  makeshifts  and  inventions.  He 
warns  me  not  to  make  myself  too  comfortable,  not 
to  settle  down  too  entirely,  or  I  may  have  to  stay 
forever  in  Matsuyama. 

One  of  the  American  ladies  told  me  about  the 
camellia  hedge's  blooming,  and  I  wished  that  I 
might  see  it  in  December  covered  with  huge  pink 
blossoms.  Vladimir's  eyes  flashed  merrily  as  he 
regarded  me  and  said:  "Have  a  care!  Have  a 
care !  Strike  a  piece  of  wood,  quickly,  or  you 
will  have  the  luck  to  see  it  in  December.  God 
forbid!  Never  camellia  Japonica  for  me  any 
more — never — never.  You  may  wait  here  until 
December  to  see  your  tsubaki  hedge  bloom,  but  not 
I — not  I.  I  hope  to  be  well  out  of  this,  and  have 
this  flash-in-the-pan  campaign  over  by  that  time. 
July  !  August !  September !  October !  November  ! 
December  !  Six  months  ?  No !  No !  I  could  not 
support  life  that  long  here — impossible.  Kuro- 
patkin  will  have  gotten  on  his  feet  by  that  time, 
and  straightened  things  out.  The  campaign  can- 
not last  that  long." 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  BARRACKS  HOSPITAL 

August  £th. 

T  VLADIMIR'S  eyes  wore  slowly  away  some  of 
their  sadness,  and  at  times,  when  the  early 
morning  dressing  of  his  wounds  had  been  less 
painful  than  usual,  a  gaiety  bubbled  up  from  his 
heart,  wit  flashed  with  its  old  brilliancy,  and 
humour  played  merrily  upon  even  his  own  sad 
state. 

"Ah !  Sophia !  Sophia !  Madame  la  prison- 
niere!  L'Accusee  de  Quoi!  How  can  you  lose  the 
count  of  my  mortal  wounds?  Can  you  not  ad- 
dress your  whole  mind  to  it  and  remember  that  I 
am  wounded  forty-two  times !  Three  perfora- 
tions, a  simple  and  a  compound  fracture,  and  a 
bone  shattering;  a  scapula,  a  tibia,  a  cranial 
grafting;  also  a  torn  ligament,  six  cicatrices,  ten 
cuts,  twelve  stabs,  some  slicings  and  contusions, 
and  last,  the  right  knee-cap,  which  is  my  X,  the 
unknown  quantity.  I  am  'Exhibit  A,  Hors  Con- 
cours,'  for  any  museum  or  college  of  surgery. 
The  whole  faculty  could  hold  clinics  over  me,  each 
specialist  in  turn.  No  need  for  chart,  manikin, 

48 


THE  BARRACKS  HOSPITAL          49 

or  cadaver.  You  should  call  the  roll  and  check  me 
off,  all  my  casualties  and  deficiencies ;  put  down  a 
bamboo  counter  for  every  item  of  my  disasters,  as 
the  coolies  keep  tally  of  their  rice  bags  on  the 
wharves.  Hold  up  your  left  hand,  Madame 
She-Who-Forgets,  and  count  me  over  again  on 
your  fingers — carefully.  Good !  Well  done !  Re- 
peat the  enumeration  once  again  from  the  begin- 
ning !  Ah !  Now  backwards !  The  knee-cap, 
which  is  X,  say  it — say  it — say  it — Ah!  Bien! 
you  may  yet  win  a  prize."  And  with  such  non- 
sense, he  cheered  the  hours. 

"Sophia!  Old  Paul  says  he  suffers  from  seven 
mortal  diseases.  Each  one  would  kill  him  at  once, 
if  the  lot  of  them  did  not  quarrel  among  themselves 
as  to  which  should  have  him  first.  So,  at  last,  I 
am  more  than  his  rival !" 

Several  times  I  asked  him  how,  where,  he  re- 
ceived all  these  terrible  wounds,  and  he  turned  my 
questions.  He  would  only  say  that  it  was  near 
Haicheng. 

"Ah,  after  a  time,  Sophia.  After  a  time.  Ah, 
God,  do  not  make  me  think  of  it.  It  was  too 
terrible.  Paul  there  may  tell  you.  Ask  him.  Ask 
Akimoff  to  bring  his  violin  in  here  and  let  us  have 
some  music.  Sing  Ave  Maria.  He  will  accom- 
pany you.  Oh !  what  ages  since  I  have  heard  your 
voice."  And  so  he  continued  to  put  me  off,  to  turn 
the  subject;  and  each  day  I  hurriedly  left  the 


50 

barracks  at  the  last  moment  of  grace,  ignorant 
still  of  how  it  had  happened. 

"I  will  tell  you,  Madame,"  said  Akimoff,  when  I 
went  with  him  to  inspect  the  kitchens.  "It  was  at 
a  conference  at  headquarters,  and  a  little  recon- 
naissance was  wanted  to  develop  the  enemy's  posi- 
tion. 'We  must  know  if  they  are  bearing  down 
this  valley  road  with  this  hill  as  objective,'  said 
Mistschenko.  'Send  some  Cossacks  off  at  once,' 
said  the  Chief;  and  at  once  they  began  consider- 
ing who  should  lead  the  scouting  party.  'One 
dare-devil  young  lieutenant  will  do,'  says  Kuro- 
patkin,  and  Mistschenko  names  two  to  be  sum- 
moned. But,  at  the  end  of  an  hour,  the  orderly 
returned  to  say  that  one  of  them  could  not  be 
found  at  all.  He  had  last  gone  down  to  the  Grand 
Duke's  headquarters,  where  there  were  always  gay 
times  at  night,  as  at  a  cabaret  or  Bal  Bullier,  and 
from  which  they  dare  not  summon  him;  and  the 
other  lieutenant  was  sick  in  his  tent  and  could  not 
stand  on  his  feet.  'Ah !  pigs  !  swine !  Drunk,  both 
of  them.  Vodka  and  champagne  will  lose  us  the 
whole  campaign,  if  I  cannot  find  a  way  to  stop  this 
thing  soon.  Whom  can  we  send  ?  Who  knows  what 
a  map  looks  like  or  calls  for,  and  knows  enough  to 
bring  back  the  right  news?'  'Let  me  go,  your 
Excellency,'  said  Von  Theill.  'I  used  to  be  good 
at  this  sort  of  thing  in  Ferghana,  you  well  know. 
Let  me  have  an  adventure  again,  for  the  fun  of  it, 


THE  BARRACKS  HOSPITAL  51 

I  beg.  Paul  Lessar  and  I  were  talking  over  our 
young  adventures  together  only  last  month.  Let 
me  renew  my  youth.' 

"  'You!  A  staff  colonel!  A  legal  councillor 
and  diplomatic  secretary.  You !  lead  a  little  band 
of  Cossacks  to  reconnoitre  a  hillside  at  night! 
Oh !  impossible !  Wake  up  the  other  lieutenants ;  it 
is  duty  for  them.  Wake  them  all  up,  and  I  will  take 
my  choice.  It  will  be  good  discipline  for  them.' 

"  'But,  I  beg  of  you,  let  me  do  it,  let  me  do  it,' 
the  Colonel  had  urged.  'I  know  the  map.  I  under- 
stand exactly  what  you  seek  to  know.  Get  me  a 
lieutenant's  coat,  and  I  am  off  in  ten  minutes.  I'll 
take  the  pickets  whose  horses  are  ready';  and, 
truly,  with  his  pockets  crammed  with  biscuits,  he 
was  off  for  the  twenty-mile  ride  down  the  road. 
I  did  not  see  him  again  until  we  encountered  at 
Matsuyama.  One  wounded  Cossack,  found  the 
next  day,  told  that  the  Colonel  had  found  the  map 
wholly  at  fault;  had  ridden  on  and  on  until  long 
after  sunrise,  before  coming  in  touch  with  the 
enemy's  scouts.  Then  turning,  he  rode  his  tired 
horses  straight  into  an  ambush  of  Japanese. 
They  said  he  fought  bravely,  was  wounded  and 
unhorsed;  but,  bringing  down  a  Kakamaki  with 
every  charge  in  his  revolvers,  he  kept  his  sur- 
rounders  at  bay  with  his  sword,  until  it  was  struck 
from  his  hand  by  the  swing  of  a  musket.  Another 
blow  left  him  senseless.  When  he  first  came  to  the 


52  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

hospital  here,  he  used  to  wake  up  in  the  night 
screaming,  having  dreamed  the  scene  over  again, 
and  seen  the  faces  of  the  Japanese  as  they  sur- 
rounded him,  lunging  with  their  bayonets  and 
yelling  like  fiends.  He  said  those  faces  would  never 
be  blotted  out.  Always  he  could  see  them,  like  the 
fiendish  faces  of  some  frightful  Japanese  masks 
he  had  once  seen.  If  he  had  not  resisted,  you  see ; 
if  he  had  surrendered  when  he  saw  it  was  all  up, 
it  would  have  been  much  better.  As  it  was,  they 
had  to  hack  and  batter  him  to  pieces  to  capture 
him  at  all.  It  was  magnificent,  though.  No 
quarter,  no  surrender — and  he  did  not  yield  his 
sword.  Oh!  but  Kuropatkin  was  in  a  fury  when 
the  word  came  back.  He  could  not  blame 
Mistschenko  and  himself  enough  for  letting  the 
Colonel  undertake  such  a  mad  enterprise,  so  out  of 
all  rank  and  order.  They  dreaded,  too,  what 
1'Etat  Major  and  all  Petersburg  would  say.  Did 
they  tell  you  in  Petersburg  how  the  Commander 
himself  was  reprimanded  for  it?" 

But  no,  there  was  nothing  to  ask  but  how  to  get 
to  Matsuyama.  To  flee  from  Petersburg  to  Mat- 
suyama  direct  was  all  that  I  had  thought  of  in 
Russia,  and  the  General  Staff  were  too  cut  up  with 
the  reprimand  from  Tsarskoe  itself  to  dwell  on  the 
thing.  Count  Keller  told  Akimoff  that  he  would 
rather  have  lost  a  regiment,  than  have  had  the 
thing  happen. 


THE  BARRACKS  HOSPITAL          53 

All  our  wounded  Russians,  when  captured  and 
taken  down  to  the  Japanese  hospital  at  Dalny, 
were  there  arrayed  in  clean  white  Japanese  ki- 
monos. These  they  wear  still  in  the  hospital 
wards,  day  and  night.  It  is  a  dress  well  suited  to 
this  hot  weather,  but  it  is  more  or  less  becoming 
to  some  of  our  stalwart  officers.  Usually  less  so. 
Their  arms  and  their  ankles  stick  out  too  far, 
despite  the  extra  sizes  provided  for  the  horios,  and 
it  is  very  much  more  an  undress  than  pajamas. 
I  feel  embarrassed  when  I  enter  the  ward,  but  we 
are  in  the  closest  intimacy  and  informality  here, 
and  I  suppose  I  shall  become  used  to  it.  The 
officers  parade  up  and  down  the  corridor  upon 
which  their  alcoves  of  rooms  open  with  perfect 
ease  and  sangfroid,  as  much  at  home  as  in  top- 
boots  and  long-skirted  coats.  Here  they  live,  two 
to  each  alcove,  free  to  wander  in  and  out  and  visit 
each  other  and  go  to  adjoining  wards,  when  they 
are  able  to  walk.  It  is  not  my  idea  of  a  prison 
at  all.  Surely  there  is  the  fullest  liberty  within 
the  barracks.  There  are  no  fetters,  no  restric- 
tions. Everything  is  plain  to  a  degree;  simple, 
hygienic,  and  clean;  and  when  I  consider  and  sum 
up  all  these  things,  I  wonder  if  there  is  anything 
at  all  to  complain  of.  The  prisoners'  lot  could  not 
well  be  a  happier  one,  and  I,  for  one,  would  less 
willingly  be  a  prisoner-of-war  in  some  places  I  can 
think  of  in  Russia. 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE  RED  CROSS  OF  JAPAN 

August  6th. 

'TT^HE  little  Red  Cross  nurses  in  the  hospital 
•••  are  a  daily  wonder  to  me,  their  ability  a 
revelation  and  a  surprise.  Long  ago,  I  used  to 
meet  Japanese  great  ladies  of  the  court  circles  in 
Tokyo,  who  spoke  only  Japanese,  and  very  few 
words  even  in  that  language.  A  visit  was  chiefly 
an  affair  of  who  could  make  the  most  bows  in  ten 
minutes.  The  Japanese  ladies,  then  in  their  first 
foreign  clothes,  were  automatons  only,  wooden, 
stolid,  impassive.  Harem  visits  in  Cospoli  are  a 
wild  excitement,  intellectual  feasts,  beside  the 
miserable  quarter-hours  of  my  official  visits  in 
Tokyo.  And  official  dinners!  Ah,  me!  My 
pantomime  partners  and  the  dumb  great  ladies  at 
the  funereal  dinners  at  the  Ministries !  Only  one 
thing  ever  saved  the  day,  or  the  night,  and  that 
was  that  the  menus  and  the  wines  were  always  irre- 
proachable; the  Japanese  having  a  most  ex- 
aggerated regard  for  the  obligations  of  hospitality 
and  a  jealous  sensitiveness  lest  they  fall  below  the 

64 


THE  RED  CROSS  OF  JAPAN          55 

highest  European  standards  at  a  feast.  They 
could  command  food  and  wine  in  the  open  market, 
but  wit  and  liveliness,  gaiety  and  "go"  cannot  be 
commanded  anywhere  when  the  chairs  are  filled 
with  people  chosen  only  by  rank.  I  have  suffered 
also  in  Rome. 

Repression  and  self-effacement  have  been 
ground  into  the  women  of  the  race  for  such  un- 
counted generations,  that  it  will  take  several 
generations  of  education  to  give  them  any  social 
emancipation  and  courage.  Even  the  Protestant 
missionaries  in  Matsuyama,  English  and  Ameri- 
cans, who  called  on  me  as  soon  as  I  arrived,  say 
that  the  war  has  already  worked  wonders  for 
Japanese  women ;  that  the  active  work  of  the  Red 
Cross  has  called  out  the  women  of  all  classes  from 
their  homes ;  that  the  men  have  had  to  confer  with 
and  work  with  them  on  a  plane  of  equality,  and  in 
such  public  works  the  superior  brains  and  ability 
of  the  women  have  often  been  conspicuous.  It 
has  been  a  wholesome  experience  for  the  men  of 
Japan,  and  in  this  Red  Cross  Society  of  a  million 
members,  some  of  the  old  traditions  are  receiving 
hard  blows.  Under  the  news  laws,  a  few  Japanese 
women  control  their  own  great  fortunes  and  ad- 
minister great  estates,  and  their  cooperation  and 
leadership  in  Red  Cross  work  are  eagerly  sought. 

The  thousands  of  trained  nurses  of  the  Red 
Cross  are  for  the  time  a  part  of  the  military  estab- 


56  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

lishment,  they  have  military  rank  and  discipline, 
and  through  that  nearly  enjoy  equality  with  the 
men  workers ;  the  surgeons  must  rely  upon,  confer 
with,  and  work  with  them  on  new  lines,  regarding 
them  as  human  beings  possessed  of  individual  souls. 
Much  enlightenment  in  this  regard  has  come  to 
Japanese  men  through  the  war,  but  it  will  take 
some  generations  for  them  to  acquire  the  in- 
stinctive deference  to  women,  the  sense  of  chivalry 
which  prompts  European  men  to  show  considera- 
tion to  women  because  they  are  women.  Bushido 
is  a  fine  moral  creed  and  cult  for  the  warrior,  but 
women  have  no  part  in  Bushido,  and  romantic  love 
has  no  place  in  the  Japanese  school  of  chivalry. 

The  Red  Cross  nurses  had  three  years  of  hard 
training  in  the  schools  for  nurses  before  they  re- 
ceived diplomas,  and  had  good  hospital  practice 
before  they  came  here.  These  at  the  barracks 
hospital  are  the  cheeriest,  most  capable  little 
things  I  know.  They  never  seem  tired,  although 
they  never  rest.  They  are  never  cross  or  im- 
patient, but  always  smiling,  exquisitely  polite. 
Even  when  bandaging,  they  make  little  ducks  with 
their  heads  in  lieu  of  bows,  and  say  their  regret- 
ful Gomen  nasai  (I  beg  your  pardon)  whenever 
the  patient  groans.  In  their  immaculate  white 
dresses,  caps,  and  stockinged  feet,  they  are  re- 
freshment to  the  eye  on  these  hot  days.  They  are 
like  children  beside  the  huge  Cossacks  they  care 


THE  RED  CROSS  OF  JAPAN         57 

for — very  precocious  children,  when  one  observes 
their  skill  and  courage  in  the  operating  room. 
They  seem  to  humour  and  charm  their  patients 
with  indulgence,  yet  they  are  martinets  in  their 
precise  obedience  to  surgeon's  orders.  The  patient 
is  never  crossed,  yet  he  always  obeys  too.  It  is 
the  old,  old  story  of  the  hypnotic  East.  The  big 
Cossacks  cry  bitterly  when  their  nurses  are 
changed. 

Vladimir  insists  that  only  the  wise,  kind,  cheer- 
ful chief  nurse  of  the  hospital-ship  kept  life,  or 
hope  of  life  in  him,  during  the  agonising  days  on 
the  Yellow  Sea.  His  nurse  here  is  a  little  mite  of 
a  thing  with  rosy  cheeks  and  soft  sympathetic 
black  eyes.  Nesan,  some  of  the  officers,  who  had 
known  Japanese  tea  houses,  called  her,  and  she  is 
known  now  by  no  other  name.  I  find  that  her 
name  is  O'Shige  San ;  that  she  came  from  Meguro 
near  Tokyo,  and  received  her  nurse's  diploma 
from  the  hands  of  the  Empress  herself  at  the  Red 
Cross  hospital  in  Tokyo.  I  find  Japanese  words 
and  phrases  coming  back  to  me  after  all  these 
years,  as  I  try  to  talk  with  her.  I  shall  begin 
studying  Japanese  at  once  again,  as  it  will  be 
helpful,  and  the  lessons  will  fill  the  long  morning 
hours,  when  I  cannot  be  with  Vladimir. 

I  wanted  to  do  something  for  O'Shige  San,  but 
of  course  I  could  not  make  her  a  money  present, 
and  as  the  nurses  wear  their  white  uniform  in  the 


58  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

hospital,  and  a  black  dress,  bonnet,  and  military 
coat  when  travelling,  there  is  no  use  to  give  her  the 
pretty  obis  and  kimonos  that  one  usually  presents 
in  Japan.  Vladimir  suggests  that  I  make  a  con- 
tribution to  the  Red  Cross  Society  and  to  the 
Volunteer  Nurses'  Society,  composed  of  Japanese 
ladies  of  position,  who  take  hospital  training  and 
relieve  the  overworked  Red  Cross  nurses.  These 
volunteers  wear  the  prescribed  dress  and  do  all  of 
a  nurse's  daily  duties,  roll  bandages  and  arrange 
supplies,  meet  hospital  trains  and  ships. 

I  made  an  appointment  to  call  upon  the  Gov- 
ernor's wife,  and  gave  her  the  five  hundred  roubles 
for  the  Red  Cross,  and  five  hundred  for  the  Volun- 
teer Nurses,  as  a  little  thank-offering  from  a 
grateful  Russian.  She  was  very  quiet  and 
formally  correct,  and  with  exquisite  courtesy 
accepted  and  thanked  me,  through  the  interpre- 
ter. She  was  the  aristocrat,  the  grande  dame,  to 
her  delicate  finger-tips.  She  had  soft,  kind  eyes, 
and  in  her  calm  was  not  so  wooden  as  those  of 
her  class  whom  I  used  to  meet;  but  there  was  a 
chasm  between  us.  She,  the  real  woman,  whom  I 
would  like  to  know,  was  far-away,  unattainable, 
close  shut  in  the  conventions  as  in  her  cool,  dove- 
coloured  silk  kimono.  Then  the  Governor  himself 
came  into  the  interview,  and  the  atmosphere  be- 
came more  sympathetic  to  me.  He  had  been  in 
Russia  years  ago,  and  had  kept  up  his  study  of 


THE  RED  CROSS  OF  JAPAN          59 

Russian  ever  since.  He  was  sorry  that  he  did  not 
feel  at  liberty  to  go  oftener  to  the  hospital  and 
the  places  of  detention,  as  he  should  greatly  enjoy 
the  society  of  so  many  cultivated  foreigners  at 
this  remote  post  of  duty.  I  easily  understood, 
that  in  time  of  war  the  civil  officials  must  refrain 
from  embarrassing  or  interfering  with  the  mili- 
tary in  any  way.  He  could  further  any  one  else 
doing  things  for  the  Russians,  but  he  must  avoid 
for  himself  any  direct  attentions  beyond  the 
severest  lines  of  etiquette.  He  begged  me  to  come 
to  him  or  send  at  once,  if  any  need  or  want  arose ; 
and  to  feel  quite  safe  and  sure  that  he  had  me  in 
the  especial  care  and  keeping  of  his  officials.  He 
assured  me  that  my  little  paper  and  bamboo  house 
was  guarded  night  and  day  beyond  all  chance  of 
harm  or  intrusion;  and  he  only  advised  that 
during  the  next  week,  when  the  town  would  be  full 
of  country  people  saying  farewell  to  the  depart- 
ing regiments,  I  should  not  go  about  the  streets 
any  more  than  necessary.  He  would  be  dis- 
tressed if  any  ignorant  rustic  should  offer  rude- 
ness to  me  in  his  prefecture.  "I  think  all  the 
Matsuyama  people  know  you,  and  admire  so  much 
your  coming  this  long  way  to  care  for  your 
wounded  husband ;  but  the  country  people  are  very 
ignorant,  and  might  be  impolite." 

A  few  days  later,  ladies  from  the  two  societies 
came  to  see  me,  and  after  the  first  salutations  and 


60  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

the  first  sip  of  tea,  there  was  life  enough  in  them. 
They  had  accepted  a  portion  of  my  fund  as  a 
subscription  for  life  membership  in  both  societies. 
They  accepted  the  rest  as  a  gift,  and  they  brought 
me  the  beautifully  written  certificates  and  the 
badges  to  wear.  They  were  more  animated  and 
alert  than  any  Japanese  ladies  I  had  met  before; 
and  I  found  that  they  were  the  wives  of  Japanese 
officers  who  had  gone  to  the  front,  wives  of  local 
officials,  and  wives  of  rich  merchants  and  land- 
owners, all  leading  spirits  and  active  workers  in 
their  missions  of  mercy.  One  of  them  was  the 
daughter  of  the  old  daimio.  Her,  they  men- 
tioned in  awe-struck  tones,  but  I  could  not  dis- 
tinguish her  from  the  half-dozen  prim  little 
women  in  shadow-,  and  cloud-,  and  mist-coloured 
silk  and  crape  kimonos,  who  sat  on  the  edges  of 
my  foreign  chairs,  with  hands  and  fingers  in  the 
precise  pose  of  Japanese  good  form.  They  made 
cordial  and  sympathetic  speeches,  full  of  nice 
feeling  to  me  the  stranger,  who  was  to  be  as  a 
guest  and  sister  to  each  one.  They  were  nice; 
they  were  true  gentlewomen;  they  were  sincere, 
and  I  liked  them.  Every  week,  they  leave  their 
beautiful  homes  and  picture  gardens,  and  go  to 
look  upon  wounds  and  agonised  faces  at  the 
hospitals  all  day  long;  bandaging,  dressing,  feed- 
ing, and  tending  their  own  Japanese  soldiers,  and 
also  our  poor  Russians.  I  felt  drawn  to  them  at 


61 

once,  as  I  never  did  to  the  great  ladies  in  Tokyo, 
and  I  am  sure  we  shall  be  real  friends — especially 
one  little  grey  wren  of  a  woman,  whose  gentle 
eyes  and  smile  made  hers  the  most  attractive 
Japanese  face  I  have  ever  seen.  She  noted  my 
garden  row  of  blooming  plants  and  dwarf  pines, 
bought  from  the  grizzled  old  gardener  who  waits 
for  me  at  the  gate  every  afternoon  when  I  come 
home,  and  she  begged  me  to  come  to  her  garden — 
to  come  at  six  o'clock  any  morning  and  see  her 
asagaos  (convolvuli).  This  is  surely  the  land  of 
early  rising. 

I  went  to  the  hospital  the  next  day,  wearing  all 
of  my  new  decorations  with  my  Russian  Red 
Cross  badges ;  and,  from  the  first  sentry  at  the 
gate  to  Vladimir,  the  row  of  buttons  and  medals 
across  my  white  dress  front  created  a  grand  sen- 
sation. I  waited  for  Vladimir  to  say  something; 
and  in  silence  I  watched  the  humour  rise  and 
twinkle  in  his  eyes.  The  fun  bubbled  and  bubbled, 
and  finally  flashed  out,  as  he  smiled  broadly  and 
asked,  "For  the  love  of  the  Lord,  Sophia,  where 
did  you  get  all  those  orders?  Have  you  been  to 
the  little  shop  in  the  Palais  Royal?  And  what  are 
they?  For  merit,  for  deeds  of  valour,  for  good 
conduct,  for  standing  around  while  an  ambassador 
signed  his  name,  or  a  Grand  Duchess  descended 
from  a  railway  carriage,  or  for  good  roubles  laid 
in  the  Japanese  palm?  I  am  not  a  shadow  beside 


62  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

you  in  my  gala  uniform.  You  are,  as  the  English 
officers  say,  decked  out  like  a  Christmas  tree. 
Would  you  like  Akimoff's  St.  George,  or  Dra- 
chenberg's  St.  Anne  to  help  out?" 

And  he  called  them  all  in  to  see  me,  the  Chevalier 
of  the  Red  Cross !  The  Commandant  of  Volunteer 
Nurses !  He  bade  them  go  tell  little  Sienkiewicz 
to  come  and  see  me  wearing  full  dress  and  ordinary 
decorations,  grand  cordons  and  small  buttons  all 
at  once,  at  the  same  time,  side  by  side ;  for  Sienkie- 
wicz would  rise  from  his  cot,  plaster-bound,  band- 
aged, with  his  leg  in  splints,  as  he  was,  with  the 
horror  of  it,  they  knew.  The  son  is  the  father  all 
over  again,  only  more  so;  and  splits  the  hairs  of 
court  etiquette  and  regulations  here  in  prison,  as 
if  he  were  the  old  count  safely  at  peace  in  the 
bureau  of  decorations  in  Petersburg. 

With  all  the  fun  they  made  of  me,  and  the 
amusement  it  furnished  them  to  see  a  loyal  Rus- 
sion  wearing  the  Japanese  Imperial  Chrysanthe- 
mums and  Phoenix  over  my  heart,  Vladimir  was 
pleased  with  what  I  had  done. 

I  fear  I  did  look  like  those  wrinkled  old  sentries, 
second-reserve  men,  who  wear  all  their  China  War, 
Boxer  Expedition,  valour  and  sharpshooter  medals 
as  they  stand  sullenly  guarding  prisoners  here, 
instead  of  winning  more  medals  in  Manchuria. 
Poor  veterans !  We  do  not  see  here  the  fine  flower, 
or  even  the  average  of  the  active  army  of  Japan, 


THE  RED  CROSS  OF  JAPAN          63 

which  is  doing  such  inexplicable  things  in  the  field. 
If  all  their  officers  and  men  in  Manchuria  were  as 
these  we  come  in  contact  with  in  Matsuyama,  our 
Russian  troops  could  tell  a  better  tale.  No  am- 
bitious soldier  can  be  satisfied  to  stay  back  here 
and  protect  the  enemy.  Oh,  no!  Unfortunately, 
we  see  most  the  petty  Japan  of  the  petty  officials, 
the  surly  Japan  of  the  disappointed  old  third-re- 
servists. The  preux  chevaliers,  the  true  followers 
of  Bushido,  the  knightly  creed  of  Japan,  are  busy 
elsewhere,  over  in  Manchuria — all  save  the  Sur- 
geon-in-Chief.  He  is  mercifully  left  with  us,  as 
type  and  living  example  of  Japan's  best. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  DOYO 

Wednesday,  August  10th. 

TT  has  been  for  years  my  role  to  act  as  special 
-••  advocate,  defender,  and  expounder  of  the 
Japanese,  with  Vladimir  often  taking  sides  against 
me  and  finding  a  certain  delight  in  teasing  and 
goading  me  on  to  the  most  extreme  and  extrava- 
gant statements,  in  my  zeal  and  partisanship. 
How  often  have  I  stopped  breathless,  with  crimson 
cheeks  and  moist  forehead,  after  a  bout  with  my 
fun-loving  tormentor  or  the  dear  circle  in  Rome, 
on  the  everlasting  topic  of  Japan !  I  have  de- 
clared the  Japanese  to  be  the  people  of  the  future ; 
Japanese  art,  Asia's  last  and  best  gift  to  the 
world's  civilisation.  But  after  Alexeieff  assumed 
his  calamitous  viceroyship,  and  relations  became 
tense  between  Russia  and  Japan,  the  subject  was 
taboo  for  me,  and  I  had  to  sit  still  and  silent  while 
the  most  abominable  slanders  and  misconceptions 
were  bandied  about  me.  There  were  many  awk- 
ward moments  for  me  in  Petersburg,  when  some 

malicious  or  tactless  woman,  like  Sophia  A , 

for  instance,  said:  "But  of  course,  Sophia  Ivan- 
ovna  does  not  agree  with  us.  She  has  always 

64 


THE  DOYO  65 

loved  and  praised  the  Japanese,  and  thinks  them 
the  only  perfect  people  on  earth.  Is  it  not  so?" 

"I  knew  many  good  people  in  Japan,  when  I 
lived  there,  but  it  was  many  years  ago.  I  cannot 
say  that  I  know  any  of  these  Komuras,  and  Kat- 
suras  and  Kurinos,  who  have  made  so  much 
trouble  with  Russian  affairs ;  and  it  may  be  that 
Japan  has  entirely  changed  now,  with  all  the  new 
ways  they  have  adopted.  They  are  much  like 
Europeans  to-day,  I  hear."  This  was  as  much  as 
I  could  say  in  reply.  I  wanted  to  say :  "They  are 
not  savages,  believe  me.  They  have  religions  of 
their  own ;  there  are  many  Christians ;  they  possess 
a  unique,  special,  and  high  civilisation  of  their  own, 
and  if  they  borrowed,  they  did  not  borrow  nor 
copy  their  philosophy,  their  jurisprudence,  and 
their  arts  from  Greece  or  Rome  as  North  Europe 
did.  Read  their  book  Bushido,  for  the  code  of 
the  samurai,  and  you  will  see  that  our  army  is 
meeting  an  honourable  foe,  an  enemy  which  de- 
mands great  generalship  to  defeat." 

Deep  down  in  their  inscrutable  hearts,  the  Jap- 
anese soldiers  feel  themselves  consecrated  as  to  a 
religious  cause,  when  they  go  to  war  for  their 
Emperor,  who  is  to  them  still  a  sacred  being,  the 
Sun  God,  divinely  descended  to  earth.  I  know  how 
high  is  the  principle  and  how  unselfish  the  abandon 
with  which  Vladimir  went  to  this  war ;  and  I  know 
how  differently,  from  what  other  motives  other 


66  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

officers  went  to  Manchuria.  And  the  rank  and  file  ? 
Have  the  mujiks  in  our  wheat  fields  the  same  en- 
lightenment, the  same  comprehensions  of  any  such 
warrior's  creed  as  this  Bushido,  which  the  toilers 
in  the  rice  fields  and  the  jinrikisha  coolies  know, 
and  can  expound  to  one?" 

Now    Vladimir    begs    me    to    talk    more    about 
Japan,  to  explain  Bushido  and   other  things  to 

Akimoff    and    D ,    who    have    the    strangest 

notions.  Despite  the  fury  of  those  first  weeks  in 
Petersburg,  and  the  exciting  weeks  in  Manchuria, 
Vladimir  can  still  see  with  clear  impartial  discern- 
ing eyes  the  real,  true  Japan  that  surrounds  him 
in  this  far  province.  He  realises  that  they  are 
people,  human  beings,  although  he  and  the  other 
Russian  sufferers  saw  little  of  Japan  as  they  were 
carried  off  and  on  hospital  ships  on  stretchers, 
and  through  the  streets.  But,  from  that  bird's- 
eye  glimpse  and  their  acquaintance  with  the 
doctors,  nurses,  and  attendants,  the  hot-heads 
know  it  all — the  country,  the  people,  the  national 
character  and  ideals,  social  institutions  and  home 
life — all — everything.  And  there  is  no  use  to 
contradict  them.  They  cannot  be  misinformed. 
They  know  things  by  their  own  second  sight  and 
intuitions,  evidently.  Dr.  Rein,  the  German 
savant,  is  a  babe  and  a  tyro  beside  them;  and 
Lafcadio  Hearn,  the  one  true  expounder  of  this 
human  mystery,  Japan,  is  a  visionary,  they  say. 


THE  DOYO  67 

These  swashbuckling  young  Cossacks  are  con- 
vinced of  the  inherent  savagery  and  cruelty  of 
the  Japanese  people.  They  cannot  distinguish  be- 
tween them  and  the  Chinese,  and  several  times 
they  have  recounted  things  the  Chinese  did  during 
the  Boxer  Rebellion,  as  things  that  happened  in 
Japan:  "Well,"  say  they,  "may  be  the  Chinese 
did  do  it  that  particular  time,  but  the  Japanese 
will  do  it,  too.  They  are  not  a  bit  different.  The 
same  race,  the  same  race !  One  wears  a  pigtail  and 
the  other  does  not.  That  is  all." 

It  is  useless  to  try  to  do  anything  with  such 
wrong-headed  people,  but  Vladimir  begs  me  to  be 
patient  with  them  a  little  longer  and  try  to  con- 
vince them  that  all  Japan  is  not  waiting  to  torture 
and  slaughter  them,  and  that  their  lives  do  not 
hang  by  a  slender  thread.  They  really  believe 
that  the  continual  presence  of  an  Italian  gunboat 
in  the  Straits  of  Shimonoseki  is  the  only  guarantee 
of  their  lives  being  spared.  These  tell  me,  that  in 
the  event  of  an  uprising,  that  Italian  gunboat 
will  come  and  in  the  name  of  all  Europe  demand 
the  Russian  prisoners  and  take  them  in  safe  keep- 
ing. I  know  the  size  of  Italian  gunboats  in  the 
Pacific,  and  I  laugh,  remembering  those  fleets  of 
huge  ships  at  Ujina  and  Kure — also  our  converted 
Volunteer  ships  in  Japanese  hands. 

"Why  should  the  Japanese  rise  and  slaughter 
these  unarmed  prisoners  in  Matsuyama?"  I  ask. 


68  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

"Oh !  You  see,  when  the  turn  comes  and  we  are 
winning  all  the  victories,  then  the  Japanese  will 
be  crazed  by  their  continual  defeats  and  make  a 
savage  onslaught  on  any  Russian  they  can  see — 
kill  every  European  on  their  islands." 

I  laughed  at  the  absurd  notions,  and  Akimoff 
was  almost  offended,  and  said  I  laughed  at  the 
idea  of  a  Russian  victory ! 

"Mon  Dieu!  She  is  right.  I  laugh,  too,  at  the 
idea  of  those  asses,  those  fools,  those  imbeciles,  at 
Liaoyang  ever  crying  Pobieda!  Pobieda!  [Vic- 
tory! Victory!]"  cried  an  irate  old  officer. 

Soon  after  I  arrived  we  learned  of  the  raids  of 
the  Vladivostok  ships  down  to  the  mouth  of 
Tokyo  Bay,  where  they  sank  and  captured  mer- 
chant ships  at  their  will.  All  the  Japanese  war- 
ships were  ranged  in  front  of  Port  Arthur,  and 
the  coasts  of  Japan  lay  at  our  mercy.  "More's 
the  pity,"  Hansen  says,  "that  they  did  not  sail  in 
and  destroy  the  railway  wherever  it  came  near  the 
shores,  drop  a  shell  into  the  shrines  of  Ise,  and  sow 
the  mouth  of  Tokyo  Bay  so  full  of  mines  that  no 
ships  would  dare  sail  there  while  the  war  lasted." 
He  thinks  of  nothing  but  the  loss  of  Makaroff 
and  the  Petropavlovsk,  poor  man,  and  they  begin 
to  think  that  his  mind  is  affected,  unhinged  first 
by  the  shock  and  horror  of  that  experience,  and 
then  by  the  night  of  horror  when  he  floated  in  a 
typhoon  sea,  when  the  junk  by  which  he  was 


69 

escaping  with  despatches  from  Port  Arthur  to 
Chef oo  was  blown  up  by  a  mine  just  as  a  Japanese 
torpedo  boat  overhauled  it. 

When  he  heard  that  Skrydloff's  ships  had  been 
ravaging  the  coast  and  preparing  to  land  and 
effect  the  rescue  of  these  Matsuyama  prisoners,  he 
lay  awake  all  night.  When  he  dozed  by  day,  he 
begged  the  others  to  wake  him  if  the  welcome 
sound  of  Skrydloff's  guns  were  heard.  "More 
likely  the  shrieks  of  the  mob  coming  to  murder  us 
before  Skrydloff's  men  can  reach  us.  But  we  will 
make  a  fight  for  our  lives  then,"  he  says  grimly. 

Now  Hansen  has  settled  into  a  gloomy,  sombre 
mood,  lying  for  hours  with  his  face  covered, 
making  no  sound  or  answer.  "God  grant  he  does 
not  go  insane  here,"  sighs  Vladimir.  "There  is 
enough  without  that.  This  doyo,  the  very  hottest 
part  of  summer,  is  when  most  people  do  lose  their 
reason." 

The  sun  burns  by  day  and  the  nights  are 
breathless.  Only  the  thick,  thatched  roofs  save 
the  thin  wooden  barracks  from  being  so  many 
ovens,  and  the  merciful  darkness  comes  as  early 
as  in  the  tropics.  This  is  the  weather  that  is  good 
for  the  rice  crop,  and  if  the  fateful  hundredth  day 
passes  without  typhoon,  the  kernels  of  grain  will 
be  formed  and  will  stand  any  further  storms. 
The  promise  is  for  the  greatest  rice  crop  ever 
known,  something  to  surpass  the  great  crop  of  last 


70  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

year  which  the  peasants  said  was  a  sign  from  the 
gods  to  go  to  war.  I  suppose  a  great  crop  this 
year  will  mean  to  continue  the  war.  And  we  in 
Russia?  What  crops  are  they  gathering  there? 
What  signs  from  the  gods  for  us? 


Sunday,  August  14th. 

Last  night  there  was  a  Banzai,  that  is  an  illu- 
mination of  the  houses  with  strings  of  lanterns, 
and  a  lantern  procession  to  celebrate  the  naval  vic- 
tory they  claim  was  won  just  outside  Shimonoseki. 
The  major-domo  of  my  household  says  the  Japa- 
nese sunk  the  Rurik,  and  captured  all  the  crew.  I 
do  not  believe  it. 

It  was  a  beautiful  sight,  and  Anna  and  I  went  to 
the  upper  rooms,  when  the  shouting  told  that  the 
procession  was  near  our  gate.  We  looked  out 
through  the  gap  in  the  house  roofs  to  the  long 
line  of  the  moat  reflecting  the  rows  of  red  lanterns 
that  hung  along  the  eaves  and  doubling  every  lan- 
tern that  moved  along  the  highway. 

But  what  sorrow  the  gay  sight  drove  to  my 
heart!  How  the  shrill,  ecstatic  cries  of  Banzai! 
Banzai!  Banzai!  always  three  times  in  succession, 
made  me  wail  with  misery,  with  anguish  for  my 
country's  disaster;  made  me  realise  that  the  day 
of  victory  and  peace  is  yet  further  removed. 

It  was  my  one  wish  that  Vladimir  and  the  poor 


THE  DOYO  71 

sufferers  in  the  hospital  would  not  hear  all  the 
chorus  of  rejoicing  voices  and  the  discordant  blare 
of  fifes  and  drums ;  but  it  seems  that  the  proces- 
sion did  march  entirely  around  the  barracks  com- 
pound. The  prisoners  heard  and  knew  that  it 
signified  fresh  sorrows  for  Russia. 

To-day,  every  patient  is  worse,  fevers  are 
higher,  wounds  inflamed,  and  nerves  worn  by  a 
sleepless  night.  With  Vladimir,  every  shattered 
nerve  is  on  edge;  each  sound  and  jar  is  pain;  his 
head  burns,  and  the  wounds  throb  through  their 
bandages.  "And  I  lie  here,  a  helpless  hulk  of 
flesh !  the  wreck  of  a  man,  who  must  listen  to  jeers 
at  Russia's  defeats !"  he  exclaims,  with  tears  burn- 
ing in  his  eyes.  "Ah!  why  have  I  lived  for  this? 
Why  do  I  wish  to  live?" 

Hansen  roamed  the  ward  all  night,  raging  like 
an  angry  wolf,  grinding  his  teeth,  tossing  his 
arms,  and  making  efforts  to  break  away  and 
grapple  with  the  celebrants  outside.  To-day,  he 
lies  scowling  on  his  cot,  his  face  covered  with  a 
fan  half  the  time,  although  it  is  a  day  of  great 
heat.  It  seemed  to  me  that  I  could  not  refrain 
from  going  to  protest  to  the  surgeons  against 
such  inhumanity  to  helpless,  wounded,  suffering 
men,  as  was  committed  last  night;  but  Vladimir, 
moaning  and  beating  with  his  fingers  on  my  hand, 
as  waves  of  pain  swept  through  him,  besought  me 
not  to  speak  of  it. 


72  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

"No,  no,  Sophia.  It  is  better  to  endure.  Per- 
haps you  will  want  to  protest  later  on  for  some- 
thing else.  Keep  peace,  keep  friends.  The 
surgeons  and  nurses  like  you,  you  know.  They 
will  not,  if  you  see  things,  qr  say  things.  That 
was  a  touch  of  their  Bushido  last  night.  Show 
your  Bushido,  and  do  not  refer  to  it." 

But  I  left  with  sorrow  and  walked  home  in  de- 
pression from  the  gate  where  Anna  was  waiting  to 
walk  with  me.  "Watanabe  wishes  to  go  the  first 
of  September,"  she  told  me.  "He  says  the  tourists 
will  be  coming  then,  and  he  wishes  to  get  a  travel 
engagement." 

"But  what  shall  we  do  without  him?"  I  cried 
almost  in  fright,  for  it  seemed  that  disasters  were 
heaping  upon  me;  that  more  and  worse  would 
follow.  "How  shall  we  get  on  without  our  courier 
as  interpreter?  How  shall  we  manage  with  the 
police  visits  and  all?  No,  no.  He  cannot  go." 

"But,  Madame,  we  shall  manage  perfectly  with- 
out him.  The  butler  and  the  cook  are  both  very 
discontented  that  he  stays.  He  really  absorbs 
much  of  the  profits  which  would  come  to  them.  I 
do  not  like  him.  He  is  too  much  the  spy.  I  fear 
he  may  like  to  make  sensations,  since  it  is  so  dull 
here  for  him.  Madame  knows  the  Japanese  lan- 
guage now." 

He  brought  me  a  Karatsu  tea  bowl  as  a 
farewell  present,  and  when  I  added  it  to  my 


THE  DOYO  73 

shelf  of  tea  bowls,  and  sighed  to  think  it  might  be 
the  last  of  the  same  Tien  hai  quality,  he  assured 
me  that  his  friend,  the  curio  dealer,  would  continue 
to  bring  to  me  any  choice  pottery  pieces,  and  that 
he  would  soon  have  some  from  Tosa  and  Bungo 
provinces.  I  expressed  fear  that  the  many  officers 
now  here  might  prove  rivals,  and  Watanabe  struck 
an  attitude  and  said  scornfully :  "Oh !  these  officers 
here  do  not  know,  unless  you  educate  them  yourself. 
They  are  just  like  tourists.  We  can  sell  them  any- 
thing, if  we  make  it  a  big  price  and  tell  them  it 
came  from  old  daimio's  go-down;  or  from  some 
one  whose  only  son  is  killed  in  war;  or  some  rich 
man  who  wants  to  buy  war  bonds.  They  don't 
know  anything  about  the  real  articles  of  Japan, 
those  other  horios." 

I  would  like  to  tell  that  to  Vladimir's  visitors 
from  the  Kokaido;  who,  having  been  in  Nagasaki 
once  or  twice  on  ships,  know  all  of  Japanese  art 
and  preach  Japanese  art,  de  haut  en  bas,  to  us  at 
the  barracks. 

Before  Watanabe  left,  he  had  the  pleasure  of 
ushering  in  and  serving  tea  to  the  Governor  and 
his  wife.  During  the  visit,  the  dignitary  ex- 
pressed regret  for  the  procession  that  passed  by 
the  barracks  and  jeered  outside  the  Kokaido.  "It 
shall  not  happen  again,"  he  said.  "The  chief 
surgeon  is  quite  angry  that  the  city  people  should 
be  so  unkind  to  his  sick  foreigners.  You  will  hear 


74  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

it  here  at  jour  house,  of  course,  when  there  is  a 
Banzai,  but  the  wounded  soldiers  shall  not  be 
wakened  and  made  unhappy  again.  The  common 
people  do  not  always  think,  you  know.  You  must 
excuse  them,  that  they  seem  so  impolite.  You  will 
tell  me  also  if  any  one  is  impolite  here  at  your 
house,  or  in  the  street.  We  want  to  do  every  kind- 
ness to  you  in  Matsuyama." 

Somehow,  something,  homesickness,  over-sensi- 
tive nerves  or  morbidity,  made  this  bit  of  chivalry 
and  sympathy  so  touching  to  me,  that  I  could  not 
keep  back  the  tears  in  telling  the  Governor  how 
kind  he  was,  and  also  the  chief-surgeon,  and  all 
with  whom  I  had  anything  to  do  in  Matsuyama. 
"It  is  so  far  beyond  any  kindness  I  had  ever 
dreamed  of.  I  only  wish  my  friends  in  Russia 
could  know  all  the  consideration  and  courtesy 
shown  me  here." 

"Yes,"  said  the  Governor,  sighing,  "I  dare  say 
the  people  in  Russia  have  a  very  wrong  idea  of  us 
in  every  way.  Because  we  are  not  of  their  skin 
and  their  religion,  they  think  we  are  all  uncivilised 
and  barbarous  as  the  Turcoman  tribes.  Perhaps 
the  war  will  have  one  good  result  in  making  the 
two  nations  acquainted." 

How  I  admired  those  two!  Aristocrats  to  the 
finger-tips,  cultivated,  courteous,  refined,  with  a 
dignity  of  manner  incomparable.  While  I  puffed 
and  fanned,  in  the  thinnest  of  lingerie  blouses,  the 


THE  DOYO  75 

Japanese  grande  dame  sat  cool  and  calm  in  a  grey 
silk  kimono,  girt  around  the  body  with  double  folds 
of  a  heavy  brocaded  satin  obi.  She  was  a  harmony 
of  soft  silver  grey  and  sheeny  dove  colours.  There 
was  a  glint  of  gold  in  the  stiff  fabric  of  her  obi, 
a  tiny  gold  clasp  on  the  cord  that  bound  the  obi 
in  place.  A  single  amber  shell  pin  was  thrust  in 
her  hair,  and  the  head  and  neck,  perfect  in  their 
lines,  in  the  massing  and  relief  of  black  and  ivory, 
stood  out  from  the  surplice  folds  of  the  kimono 
like  a  superb  etching.  As  a  work  of  art,  she  was 
perfection,  a  restful,  perfectly  composed  and 
balanced  study ;  the  tones  and  values  true.  I 
gazed  at  her  enchanted,  and  thought  how  different 
this  grande  dame  before  me  from  the  vulgar 
travesty  of  the  Japanese  woman  that  parades  our 
stage.  Think  of  those  plays  we  saw  in  London ! 
the  "Madame  Butterfly,"  and  "The  Darling  of 
the  Gods !"  What  a  million  miles  between  this 
daimio's  daughter  and  that  giggling  hoyden  with 
frizzled  hair  and  cabbage  bunches  of  flowers  over 
each  ear !  No,  Europe  does  not  understand  Japan. 
Despite  all  these  years  of  travel  and  photography, 
Europe  does  not  yet  know  what  a  Japanese  lady 
looks  like,  how  she  dresses,  nor  least  of  all  how  ex- 
quisitely smooth  and  simple  is  her  coiffure. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
THE  "RURIK'S"  MEN 

Tuesday,  August  16th. 

ANOTHER  disaster!  The  saints  seem  ar- 
rayed against  us.  Stackelberg's  corps  has 
been  defeated,  routed,  driven  back  from  its  march 
south  to  relieve  Port  Arthur!  The  prisoners 
arrived  this  morning  with  a  budget  of  news.  The 
relief  of  Port  Arthur  would  be  a  step  towards  our 
relief,  and  now  our  hopes  are  set  back  many  weeks. 

However,  I  am  here  with  Vladimir  now.  He 
lives.  He  can  speak.  I  can  do  for  him,  and  be 
with  him;  and  I  find  that  I  have  so  much  to  be 
thankful  for  in  these  instances  that  I  do  not  fret 
myself  about  rescue.  I  shall  be  glad  when  it 
comes,  and  oh !  Vladimir,  too.  If  he  is  only  able  to 
move  about  and  walk,  and  able  to  go  to  Kobe, 
and  on  board  a  mail  steamer,  when  the  relief  comes. 
When  it  comes !  Yes.  When? 

It  is  true.  There  was  a  naval  battle.  The 
Rur'ik  was  sunk,  and  the  officers  have  all  arrived 
here.  None  would  believe  the  accounts  read  in  the 
Japanese  papers,  but  the  English  newspapers 

76 


THE  "RURIK'S"  MEN  77 

from  Kobe  tell  it,  and  Russia's  sorrow  is  complete. 
"Fi'Onty  horios  come  to-day,"  said  the  rnaid  when 
she  ushered  in  my  Japanese  teacher  in  the  morn- 
ing. "Will  missis  go  with  Red  Cross  ladies  to 
Takahama  to-day?  All  ladies  go  eleven  o'clock 
train  to  see  prisoners."  But  I  could  not  think  of 
such  a  thing,  as  a  sightseeing  trip.  It  seemed  to 
shock  and  offend  me  greatly,  that  the  Japanese 
ladies  were  going  down  to  the  steamer  landing  to 
watch  and  to  look  at  our  poor  wounded  Russians 
until  I  remembered  what  service  these  Red  Cross 
members  render. 

As  I  passed  the  operating  room  on  my  way  to 
my  own  ward  in  the  afternoon,  they  were  taking 
away  two  litters.  One  face  looked  familiar,  pos- 
sibly only  the  fair-haired,  Courland  type,  and 
when  the  little  sister  of  charity  smiled  her  cheer- 
ful greeting  and  said:  "Rurik  sans,"  the  lump  in 
my  throat  made  me  look  away.  In  Vladimir's 
ward,  all  was  excitement  over  the  arrivals  and 
their  sad  news.  The  vice-commander  of  the  un- 
happy Rurik  was  in  Akimoff's  room,  where  the 
others  had  gathered,  and  we  could  hear  the  slow, 
sad  monotone  of  a  sick  man's  voice,  as  some  one 
related  a  long,  long  story  which  no  one  inter- 
rupted. 

"How  I  wish  I  could  hear  them,"  said  poor 
Vladimir.  "Go,  Sophia,  and  ask  them  to  let  you 
listen  for  me.  They  will,  they  will.  They  say 


78  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

Von  Woerffel  was  on  the  Rurik,  and  badly 
wounded.  Ask  them.  They  put  him  on  a  cork 
mattress  and  threw  him  over,  and  so  he  was  saved. 
Those  Japanese  picked  up  every  man  from  the 
Rurik,  the  whole  six  hundred  of  them.  Of  course, 
we  prisoners  are  their  assets,  their  gold  reserve, 
their  pawns  and  chips  in  the  game.  We  are  as 
good  for  exchange  and  quotations  as  bonds  or 
gold.  Oh!  God!  to  think  that  I — I,  myself — my 
own  poor  body  has  its  daily  market  value  in  this 
stock-gamble  of  nations !  Bid,  Sophia,  bid ! 
Make  your  game,  gentlemen !  Make  your  game ! 
What  am  I  worth?  What  do  you  give,  give, 
give  ?" 

"Von  Woerffel!  Impossible!"  I  said.  "He  is 
still  in  Petersburg,  Vladimir,  or  at  Cronstadt, 
rather.  I  saw  him  the  very  day  I  left.  He  could 
not  have  joined  the  fleet  at  Vladivostok  in  this 
time,  surely.  He  was  complaining  that  his 
admiral  would  not  let  him  go  to  the  Pacific.  But, 
Vladimir,"  I  cried,  jumping  to  my  feet.  "He  is 
here  now.  I  saw  him.  It  was  he,  of  course.  They 
were  taking  him  from  the  operating  room.  I  saw 
the  side-face  only,  in  bandages.  Oh !  to  think  that 
I  have  passed  him  by !" 

Poor  Von  Woerffel  lay  in  the  next  ward,  his 
face  whiter  than  the  bandages,  whiter  than  the 
pillows.  How  changed  from  the  alert  and  trim 
young  fellow  in  spotless  uniform,  who  had  talked 


THE  "RURIK'S"  MEN  79 

with  me  on  the  Quai  des  Anglais  such  a  few  weeks 
ago !  He  was  amazed  at  the  idea  of  my  going  to 
Japan,  and  at  my  courage  in  taking  the  long 
journey  into  the  enemy's  country.  How  gaily  he 
had  said :  "Au  revoir,  I  hope  to  meet  you  in  Japan. 
The  Vladivostok  fleet  will  not  let  our  brave  officers 
linger  in  sea-coast  prisons.  We  will  make  a  sortie 
while  those  poor  rats  sit  in  their  trap  in  Port 
Arthur  and  do  nothing.  We  will  come  to  your 
rescue.  La  Revanche  is  for  us." 

And  now  we  meet  in  Matsuyama !  What  irony 
of  fate !  What  sarcasm  in  prophecy !  What 
sorrow  and  humiliation ! 

"Mikail  Ivanovitch,  are  you  sleeping?"  I  asked 
quietly,  and  he  opened  his  eyes,  stared  a  full 
minute,  shut  them,  and  again  looked  at  me,  with- 
out a  word.  "How  is  it  that  you  are  here?  Sophia 
von  Theill !  Sophia  von  Theill !  But  why  are  you 
dressed  like  these  Japanese  women?  Yes,  you 
were  leaving  for  Japan  when  I  saw  you  on  the 
quay.  And  I  too  have  come  to  Japan.  Direct  to 
Japan !  From  Petersburg  to  Matsuyama  in 
twenty-seven  days !  I  only  had  two  days  in  Vladi- 
vostok, and  then  in  two  days  more,  we — we — 
oh — our  ship  was  sinking — and  we  were  all  made 
prisoners ;  it  was  better  than  drowning — perhaps. 
And  I  am  here,  you  see.  But  Vladimir?  How 
do  you  find  him?" 

"Ah !  a  wreck.     So  maimed,  so  crippled^  I  can- 


80  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

not  hope  hardly  that  he  will  ever  be  himself  again. 
You  will  find  some  old  acquaintances  here.  Others, 
like  yourself,  came  from  Petersburg  to  Matsuyama 
direct — straight  to  the  arms  of  the  enemy.  There 
are  even  some  traitor  Poles  and  some  political 
exiles  who  were  permitted  to  volunteer  for  Siberian 
regiments,  who  have  intentionally  surrendered  to 
the  Japanese.  One  even  surrendered  to  Japanese 
hospital  nurses !  to  stretcher-bearers !  When  they 
showed  him  there  was  no  one  with  hands  free  to 
accept  his  sword  even,  he  took  a  bearer's  place  in 
carrying  the  stretcher  and  let  the  hospital  coolie 
have  the  sword.  Paul  Akimoff  was  in  the 
stretcher,  half  dead  from  a  wound,  but  not  too 
dead  to  see  and  hear  that.  Akimoff  lives  to  give 
that  miscreant  his  dues,  as  much  as  for  the 
great  revenge — revenge  for  being  a  prisoner  of 
war. 

"Yes.  The  army  and  navy  are  full  of  traitors. 
I  had  no  idea  what  the  army  was  like  until  I  came 
across  Siberia.  I  may  have  seen  four  officers  on 
the  way  to  the  front  who  were  not  drunk,  but  not 
more  than  four.  It  is  one  long  champagne  and 
vodka  carouse  from  the  Urals  to  the  Amur.  All 
are  quarrelling  and  trying  to  displace  and  circum- 
vent one  another,  when  they  get  half  sober.  None 
of  them  will  work  together.  Each  balks  and  un- 
does the  other's  work.  Each  one  is  struggling  for 
promotion,  decorations,  or  the  commander's  favour 


THE  "RURIK'S"  MEN  81 

the  Viceroy's,  which  seems  more  important. 
The  real  war  is  at  headquarters.  The  Japanese 
cannot  undo  us  as  quickly  as  this  dual  authority 
will,  if  Nicholas  does  not  soon  put  an  end  to  it, 
and  send  one  or  the  other  home.  Vladivostok  and 
the  fleet  are  ringing  with  the  scandalous  conduct 
of  the  army.  No  discipline,  no  order — a  pack  of 
drunken  officers,  who  do  not  know  their  duties,  or 
anything  else. 

"It  made  me  sick  to  reach  Vladivostok  and 
hear  of  the  glorious  cruise  Skrydloff's  fleet  had 
made  down  the  Japanese  coast.  That  was  before 
my  arrival.  They  sank  everything  that  came 
along,  even  one  British  ship  that  may  make  us  a 
war  with  England  yet.  The  ships  went  near 
enough  to  see  the  smoke  and  the  lights  of  Tokyo, 
and  if  they  had  had  time  they  would  have  come 
around  here  and  carried  off  the  prisoners.  I  hoped 
I  was  going  to  be  in  for  a  trip  of  that  kind,  when 
we  put  out  of  Vladivostok  and  headed  south;  but 
instead,  we  ran  alongside  the  whole  Japanese  fleet 
and  their  infernal  gunnery  rained  shells  on  the 
poor  Rurik,  until  it  was  all  up  with  us.  The  roar 
of  the  Japanese  shells  drove  the  breath  and  life  out 
of  me;  and  every  roar  meant  the  wreck  of  some 
part  of  the  ship,  the  slaughtering  of  more  men  on 
deck.  Ugh!  I  stepped  over  blood  and  corpses, 
and  stepped  on  blood  and  corpses ;  wiped  my  face 
when  it  was  spattered  with  flesh  and  blood  of  my 


82  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

nearest  comrades;  and  threw  overboard,  once,  a 
mangled  arm  that  minute  torn  from  a  sailor's 
body,  the  fingers  moving  as  it  fell  to  the  water. 
Oh !  We  tried  to  run  for  the  Korean  coast  and 
beach  the  ship.  We  could  not.  The  engines  were 
injured,  and  the  last  one  beat,  beat,  beat,  so 
slowly — stopped — the  pumps  stopped — and  then, 
but  for  some  one  rolling  me  over  on  a  mattress 
and  lashing  me  fast,  I  should  not  be  here.  Here ! 
Here !  In  a  Japanese  prison !  I  don't  know  that 
it  is  so  much  to  be  alive  after  all.  Better  those 
who  died  in  the  fight ;  who  do  not  know  how  it  feels 
to  be  a  prisoner.  A  prisoner !  A  captive  behind 
Japanese  bayonets. 

"The  Rurik  had  come  down  to  meet  the  Port 
Arthur  fleet,  which  had  been  ordered  to  break  out 
and  run  for  Vladivostok.  Our  flotte  peureuse 
lived  up  to  its  record,  and  ran.  It  was  too  hot; 
the  sun  was  in  his  eyes ;  an  admiral  had  forgotten 
his  toilet  vinegar,  or  something  equally  momen- 
tous ;  so,  as  soon  as  that  demon  of  a  Togo  came  at 
him,  they  cut  and  ran  for  the  home  harbour,  like 
a  pack  of  children  playing  at  war.  Now  they  are 
all  safe,  if  not  too  comfortable,  under  the  guns 
of  Viterbo's  forts  again — all  except  the  few  ships 
that  got  away  to  Kiaochao  and  Shanghai.  They 
blame  Alexeieff  for  everything.  He  and  Starke 
had  let  things  run  to  such  a  pass  that  Makaroff 
said  it  would  need  a  year  for  him  to  make  it  a 


THE  "RURIK'S"  MEN  83 

fighting  fleet.  It  was  good  for  a  gala  parade,  and 
birthday  salutes  only.  Bah !  Better  that  we  had 
never  tried  to  be  a  naval  power  and  to  have  fleets 
than  have  these  fiascos.  War  is  an  entertaining 
spectacle — if  one  remains  the  passive  spectator." 


CHAPTER  IX 
THE  CZAREVITCH 

Wednesday,  August  17th. 

f  I  ^O-DAY  we  Russians  are  rejoicing  over  good 
•••      news.     The  chief-surgeon  made  the  rounds 
to  announce  it  and  see  the  beneficial  effects.     It  is 
our  Banzai. 

I  knew  it  myself  last  evening,  when  the  Japanese 
amah  ran  into  the  garden  with  a  pink  gogai  slip 
and  told  me:  "Rossia — Kogo  San-Akambo — Ko- 
domo — Banzai!"  (Russian  Empress,  a  child,  a 
boy,  Hurrah!)  I  could  hardly  believe  it  at  first. 
Could  the  gracious  Czaritsa  really  have  attained 
her  dearest  wish?  Has  the  long-pray  ed-f or 
Czarevitch  really  come  ?  Can  we  be  sure  that  there 
is  no  mistake?  Or  only  another  girl? 

How  different  is  the  whole  future  of  Russia !  I 
lose  myself  in  thinking  and  in  picturing  the  dismay 
of  certain  personages  at  Tsarskoe;  the  grand 
bouleversement  that  must  ensue;  the  grand  re- 
arrangement of  personal  values !  I  see  the  rueful 
faces  of  Marie  Feodorovna's  following;  the  dis- 
comfiture of  the  clique  of  Mikail  Alexandrovitch ; 
the  dismay  of  Vladimir  Alexandrovitch !  I  laugh, 

84 


THE  CZAREVITCH  85 

and  throw  my  arms  unconsciously,  as  the  Japanese 
do  when  they  shout  Banzai!  Ah !  Banzai!  indeed. 
Christ  and  the  saints  have  been  merciful  at  last. 
They  have  given  Russia  its  dearest  wish.  They 
have  answered  many  millions  of  prayers.  We  are 
lifted  out  of  our  darkest  despair. 

But  how,  how  did  they  let  it  happen?  By  what 
miracle  did  the  new-born  one  live?  What  spared 
him  from  those  merciless  fingers?  But  he  lives! 
Our  Czarevitch !  Our  little  Alexis  Nicholaivitch ! 
And  the  gracious  Czaritsa  must  be  almost  dead 
with  joy.  May  the  saints  protect  her ! 

Von  Woerffel's  rage  and  fury  keep  him  in  high 
fever  and  retard  his  recovery.  Akimoff  says  he 
talks  calmly  and  dispassionately  of  the  fiasco  in 
my  presence ;  but  if  so,  I  am  glad  not  to  have  seen 
him  when  his  wrath  was  at  its  height.  He  de- 
nounces the  whole  "Port  Arthur  gang,"  rakes  over 
the  Viceroy,  the  Grand  Duke  and  the  Admiralty, 
the  Cronstadt  and  the  Black  Sea  fleets.  All  of 
them  have  just  such  commanders,  he  says,  timor- 
ous, cowardly,  fussy,  old  landlubbers  and  grannies, 
who  jump  if  a  gun  pops,  who  have  no  notion  of 
working,  of  suffering  personal  discomfort,  or  ever 
fighting — fighting  to  cripple  and  sink  the  enemy; 
fighting  to  win.  Their  only  use  is  for  naval  re- 
views and  parades,  in  a  calm  sea,  on  a  sunny  day, 
the  imperial  yacht  or  a  Grand  Duke  looking  on, 
crosses  and  ribands  coming  down  in  showers. 


86  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

Bah !  When  there  are  any  trial  trips,  any 
manoeuvres  or  cruises  to  make,  then  the  Finnish 
and  Courland  officers,  who  made  the  navy  in  the  old 
Alexander's  time,  and  who  never  get  any  promo- 
tion— then  these  officers  from  the  Baltic  provinces 
are  made  use  of.  "That's  all  we  are  good  for," 
said  Von  Woerffel  bitterly — "the  crosses,  the 
compliments,  the  court  banquets  are  for  the  Alexei- 
effs  and  the  Admiralty  gang.  You  mark  me,  not 
a  ship  will  do  anything  at  Port  Arthur  from  now 
on,  except  it  has  a  Lutheran — a  Finnish,  or  a 
Baltic-province  commander.  The  line  of  greatest 
efficiency  is  a  religious  and  a  geographic  one;  just 
as  the  line  of  promotion  and  favouritism  is  also." 

Nicholas  de  Lieven  had  the  luck  to  get  down  to 
Saigon  with  his  gunboat  the  Diana.  He  must  dis- 
arm and  stay  there  until  the  end  of  the  war;  but 
then  Saigon  is  like  a  home  in  friendly  feeling.  It 
is  the  same  as  a  Russian  port,  and  he  is  not  badly 
off.  Another  gunboat  tried  to  go  clear  around 
all  the  Japanese  islands  to  Vladivostok,  but  the 
Japanese  chased  her  and  they  only  managed  to 
reach  the  Saghalien  coast,  run  the  ship  ashore,  and 
make  their  escape.  Funnily  enough,  the  Japanese 
papers  go  into  ecstasies  over  this  performance  of 
the  Novik;  and  my  Japanese  teacher  was  all  ani- 
mation when  I  next  saw  him,  his  mask  of  a  face 
alive  and  twitching,  the  statuesque  manner  all  off. 

"What  brave  little  ship  of  yours  the  Novik," 


THE  CZAREVITCH  87 

he  said.     "We  admire  it  much,  but  we  are  glad 
that  you  have  no  more  like  it.    Very  glad." 


Monday,  August  22nd. 

The  little  social  amenities  and  small  courtesies 
of  life  still  go  on.  The  military  commander  makes 
stated  visits  to  the  wounded  officers  at  the  bar- 
racks, and  to  the  others  at  the  Town  Hall  or 
Kokaido,  and  at  the  house  opposite,  where  the 
Rurik's  officers  are  quartered.  The  officers  have  a 
certain  amount  of  liberty  ;  a  surprising  amount,  it 
seems  to  me.  Twice  a  week  they,  in  turn,  go  out 
to  Dogo  Hot  Springs  in  the  suburbs  and  enjoy 
the  mineral  baths,  and  they  can  go  about  town 
shopping  with  a  soldier  as  escort.  They  are  not 
half  as  badly  off,  not  a  tenth  as  much  imprisoned 
in  the  real  sense  of  the  word,  as  we  imagined  in 
Russia.  I  am  surprised,  shocked,  I  might  almost 
say,  any  time  I  meet  them,  at  the  little  shops  in  the 
city.  The  sergeants  who  go  about  with  them  too 
seem  so  much  more  amiable  and  polite  than  the 
upstart  interpreters. 

These  interpreters  are  the  cause  and  the  source 
of  all  trouble  and  misunderstanding.  No  one  here, 
any  more  than  in  Europe,  would  dream  of  study- 
ing Russian  as  an  accomplishment,  or  a  necessary 
part  of  a  liberal  education,  any  more  than  we 
should  have  dreamed  of  studying  Japanese.  So, 


88 

when  the  war  broke  out,  there  we  were,  both  sides 
at  the  mercy  of  a  few  trained  official  interpreters 
and  a  horde  of  dispossessed  barbers,  small  curio 
dealers,  photographers,  and  house-boys  from 
Siberian  towns  and  Manchurian  garrisons.  The 
two  most  difficult  languages  of  the  two  hemispheres 
came  together  with  woeful  results,  as  we  see  daily. 
One  of  the  imperial  princes  of  Japan  sent  an 
equerry  down  the  Inland  Sea  to  visit  all  the 
military  hospitals  and  convey  his  kind  inquiries  to 
the  wounded.  With  fine  courtesy,  they  made  no 
distinction  between  the  two  peoples,  and  the  little 
man  went  through  every  ward  of  the  prisoners' 
hospital,  and  into  each  Russian  officer's  room.  I 
missed  the  event,  but  I  had  a  dozen  accounts  of  it, 
and  Akimoff's  was  most  amusing.  The  equerry 
was  serious  and  courtly,  and  seemed  most  kindly, 
but  his  message  from  his  imperial  master  was 
translated  to  AkimofPs  astonished  ears:  "His  Im- 
perial Highness  sends  his  compliments  to  you  brave 
men,  who  have  been  wounded  in  the  field  of  battle. 
You  have  served  your  country  well  and  his  High- 
ness honours  you.  He  regrets  that  you  must  now 
suffer  from  the  heat  of  our  Japanese  summers,  but 
if  you  will  behave  yourselves  it  will  soon  be  cooler!" 
Bon  Dieu!  Did  the  conventionalities  and  banal- 
ities go  further!  I  had  to  laugh  myself,  when 
AkimofF  detailed  it  with  profound  bows.  All  this 
was  stammered  out  to  him  by  the  interpreter  in 


THE  CZAREVITCH  89 

very  bad  Russian,  in  the  nursery  idioms  and 
phrases  we  use  to  small  children  when  they  are 
naughty.  A  Prince's  compliments  in  mujik's  lan- 
guage ! 

We  have  so  many  kindly  little  attentions  from 
the  common  people,  that  Vladimir  begins  to  admit 
much  that  I  claim  for  the  high  soul  of  the  race. 
Every  few  nights,  a  rain  of  cigarettes,  plums, 
fans,  and  little  trifles  come  over  the  fence  of  the 
Kokaido  and  the  Dairinji.  There  are  officers 
downstairs  at  the  Kokaido,  and  two  hundred  of 
rank  and  file  upstairs,  and  at  the  Dairinji  there 
are  only  soldiers.  This  rain  of  manna,  of  course, 
pleased  the  Cossacks,  but  neither  they  nor  the 
officers  could  understand  it.  I  spoke  of  it  to  one 
of  the  American  missionaries  with  whom  I  walked 
from  the  photograph  shop  to  the  post  office,  and 
she  laughed  greatly.  "Oh,  that  is  the  Japanese 
way  of  sympathising  with  the  poor  horios.  The 
Red  Cross  can  give  such  things  openly,  when  the 
prisoners  are  arriving  at  Takahama  or  passing 
through  a  railroad  station  in  train;  but  here  of 
course  there  is  a  difference.  My  cook  told  me  with 
glee  as  a  great  secret  that  she  had  been  over  with 
her  friends  last  night  to  throw  some  cigarettes  over 
the  fence  for  the  poor  horios.  They  are  so  sorry 
for  them.  You  might  think  these  poor,  hard- 
working people  would  envy  the  horios  their  lives  of 
ease,  and  compare  their  present  tasks  with  the 


90  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

prisoners'  leisure.  But  this  is  the  Japanese  way. 
Altruism  in  an  object  lesson.  The  European 
philosophers  ought  to  see  this  situation.  I  hope 
that  some  one  showers  mysterious  gifts  on  the 
Japanese  prisoners  in  Russia.  Do  you  fear  the 
Yellow  Peril,  Madame  von  Theill,  when  such  in- 
cidents can  happen  down  in  the  remotest  provinces, 
where  we  are  so  little  Europeanised  ?  I  will  chal- 
lenge you  to  give  me  an  incident  comparable  to 
this  on  either  side  during  the  Franco-Prussian 
war." 

"Yes.  That  is  something  to  think  about,"  said 
Vladimir  as  he  lay  still,  immovable,  ready  for  me  to 
read  to  him  some  ever-charming  chapter  of  Pierre 
Loti's  "Ramuntcho." 


Thursday,  September  1st. 

Loris  K  -  arrived  this  week  with  Boris 
Tikhon,  that  soldier  of  fortune,  revolutionist,  and 
stormy  petrel,  who  is  always  everywhere  when 
things  are  seething;  in  the  Balkans;  flying  from 
the  Boxers;  tramping  Afghanistan  in  disguise; 
and  even  coming  down  through  India  in  turban 
and  gown.  The  agitator  has  been  shut  up  in 
Port  Arthur  these  last  months,  and  has  been  de- 
fying General  Stoessel,  who  refused  him  privileges 
as  a  war  correspondent.  Stoessel  said  that  he  was 
a  reserve  officer  and  must  go  on  duty;  and  Boris 


THE  CZAREVITCH  91 

said  the  War  Office  had  given  him  a  special  stand- 
ing and  exemption,  and  that  the  Viceroy  knew  and 
approved  it.  As  Stoessel  still  tried  to  force  him 
to  duty,  Boris  slipped  out  through  the  Japanese 
lines  last  month,  went  to  the  Viceroy  at  Liaoyang, 
and  brought  back  to  Port  Arthur  a  special  order 
defining  his  status,  as  officer  on  leave  and  civil 
detail  or  something.  Stoessel  was  furious,  of 
course,  so  Boris  kept  out  of  his  sight  until  last 
week,  when  Stoessel  again  ordered  him  to  take 
duty  or  leave.  It  seems  that  the  real  siege  is  on 
now,  and  it  is  no  longer  possible  to  pass  the  land 

lines ;  so  Boris  started  off  with  Loris  K ,  who 

was  going  to  Chefoo  in  a  junk,  carrying  naval 
despatches.  They  were  becalmed  and  delayed  in  a 
fog,  which  cleared  and  showed  them  three  Japanese 
torpedo  boats  in  sight.  They  tied  stones  to  the 
despatches  and  threw  them  overboard,  and  as  the 
Japanese  were  watching  through  glasses  and  saw 
both  foreigners  drop  white  things  into  the  water, 
both  were  called  despatch  bearers,  and  Boris  could 
not  convince  them  of  his  civil  and  non-combatant 
quality.  He  also  had  uniform  in  his  portman- 
teaus, so  here  he  is  with  Loris,  who  loathes  him. 
As  a  naval  messenger,  they  imprison  him;  as  a 
war  correspondent,  they  do  not  quarter  him  with 
the  other  officers,  but  in  a  little  chalet  in  a  garden 
at  the  back  of  a  building,  where  seventy  Cossacks 
are  kept.  "My  bodyguard,"  says  Boris  magnifi- 


92  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

cently.  "An  ideal  retreat  for  an  anchorite  or  a 
literary  man,"  he  further  said.  "I  shall  prepare 
now  the  conferences  I  shall  deliver  before  scien- 
tific societies  when  I  return  to  Russia.  I  shall  give 
addresses  also  in  Vienna.  I  am  now  free  to  carry 
out  my  idea  of  writing  a  great  historical  novel,  a 
romance  of  war  and  battle." 

"Umph!"  groaned  Vladimir,  "that  is  continu- 
ing the  occupation  of  war  correspondent,  it  seems 
to  me.  A  romance  of  war  and  battle !  That's  all 
they  have  written  to  Russian  and  French  journals 
so  far.  Maybe  not  such  pure  fiction,  such  wonder- 
ful creative  work  and  feats  of  imagination  as  the 
English  papers  put  out.  Ah !  Bah !  Why  were 
we  ever  drawn  into  this  war,  anyhow?  How  Paul 
Lessar  fought  to  prevent  it!  It  will  kill  him 
before  the  winter  begins.  He  has  fought  against 
it  these  two  years,  but  Alexeieff  would  have  it.  All 
these  humiliating  disasters  are  upon  us,  solely  that 
Vladimir  Alexandrovitch,  and  the  Viceroy,  that 
Bezobrazoff  creature,  and  the  harpy  crowd  might 
get  dividends  on  their  Yalu  stock.  Poor  Paul! 
Poor  Paul!" 


CHAPTER  X 

MY  JAPANESE  HOME 

Friday,  September  2nd. 

T  AM  getting  along  famously  with  my  Japanese. 
-*•  All  that  I  ever  knew  of  the  language  has  come 
back  to  me,  and  with  daily  lessons  I  seem  to  grasp 
it  quickly.  I  understand  the  servants,  and  can 
make  the  servants  understand  me.  I  can  speak  to 
the  surly  old  sentries  at  the  gates,  to  the  little  Red 
Cross  nurses,  and  to  the  underlings  at  the  hos- 
pital; and  yesterday  was  flattered  indeed,  when 
they  asked  me  to  come  to  the  operating  room  and 
interpret  for  the  surgeon  in  charge.  The  doctor 
was  profuse  in  thanks,  escorted  me  back  to  Vladi- 
mir's room,  and  thanked  him  and  praised  him  for 
my  help.  As  if  that  were  not  Japanese  surely! 
The  Oriental  view  of  me,  as  Vladimir's  piece  of 
property.  It  was  a  tonic  for  Vladimir  though,  to 
see  me  thus  patronised  and  put  in  the  Japanese 
woman's  place. 

I  had  not  noticed  until  then,  how  I  am  appealed 
to  every  now  and  then  at  the  barracks  to 
straighten  out  some  tangle  of  language ;  to  tell  the 
nurses  what  it  is  the  sick  one  wants,  and  to  explain 

93 


94  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

things  to  the  sick  ones  and  make  them  reasonable. 
Already,  I  have  been  able  to  smooth  over  many 
difficulties,  and  twice,  the  offensive  young  inter- 
preter in  the  Chancery,  the  one  who  was  so  for- 
ward the  day  of  my  arrival,  has  appealed  to  me 
to  know  how  I  should  put  such  and  such  a  Russian 
sentence  into  Japanese.  Each  time  he  was  blankly 
surprised  at  my  rendering  and  dotted  it  down  in 
characters ;  and  I  am  sure  that  they  were  sentences 
from  prisoners'  letters.  I  hope  my  translation 
proved  the  harmlessness  of  the  phrases  and  helped 
to  speed  the  letters  on  the  long  way — forty  days 
to  Russia,  by  the  way  of  Suez  and  Odessa ! 

Watanabe  told  me  that  this  barracks  interpre- 
ter, the  most  obnoxious  young  cub  I  have  ever 
met  in  Japan,  and  of  a  type  which  is  new  to  me  at 
this  visit — is  a  soshi,  or  lawless  student  agitator, 
who  got  away  ten  years  ago  without  passport  to 
Vladivostok,  and  from  being  a  house-boy  ad- 
vanced to  owning  a  barber  shop.  He  picked  up 
Russian,  and  while  holding  his  officer  patrons  by 
the  nose  and  ear  as  he  shaved  them,  picked  up  all 
manner  of  military  gossip  and  secrets,  stole  maps 
and  papers  from  engineer  headquarters,  and  got 
away  with  his  information  a  month  before  war 
broke.  Because  of  this  service,  the  Japanese  par- 
doned his  past,  and  he  was  taken  on  as  inter- 
preter. His  case  is  typical,  and  here  are  our  poor 
officers,  who  write  an  academic  Russian,  with  their 


MY  JAPANESE  HOME  95 

letters  subject  to  misinterpretation  by  these 
vicious  little  uneducated  barbers  and  soshi,  who 
never  studied  a  Russian  grammar  or  used  a 
dictionary.  They  have  picked  up  the  gabble  and 
patois  of  East  Siberia,  and  what  they  cannot 
understand  they  suspect.  I  myself  have  been 
startled  at  the  translations  they  have  made  to  the 
surgeons  on  their  rounds.  Several  of  our  officers 
are  now  beginning  the  study  of  Japanese  in  self- 
defence,  and  I  can  believe  that  the  Cossacks  of  the 
rank  and  file  are  served  in  most  reckless  fashion. 
"Translation  is  treachery,"  is  the  truest  of  axioms. 

I  find  my  small  household  running  smoothly 
without  the  ubiquitous  Watanabe.  My  Japanese 
serve  us  to  a  marvel  and  give  me  a  comfortable 
menage.  If  Vladimir  could  be  with  me  here,  to 
enjoy  the  toy  house,  and  the  doll's  garden,  and 
the  little  pleasures  of  living,  how  happy  I  should 
be !  I  have  the  stage  setting  of  Arcadia,  but  did 
ever  any  one  enjoy  Arcadia  alone? 

The  flower  peddlers  and  the  gardeners  have 
found  me  out,  as  they  did  in  Tokyo;  and  my 
garden  now  is  perilously  near  to  being  over- 
crowded with  pots  of  charming  things.  My  ipo- 
meas  are  my  greatest  distraction,  and  all  my  little 
household  are  as  keen  as  I  for  the  heavenly  "dawn- 
flowers,"  or  Japanese  asagao.  But  all  to  our- 
selves !  Vladimir  cannot  see  them.  I  cannot  show 
them  to  him  to  my  sorrow,  and  if  I  were  to  attempt 


96  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

to  carry  a  few  beheaded  blossoms  to  him  in  a  dark 
box,  as  the  Japanese  connoisseurs  send  them  to 
flower  shows  and  around  town  to  rival  growers,  it 
would  be  a  day's  work  to  get  the  permits  for  such 
a  suspicious  proceeding.  So,  we  enjoy  our  sunrise 
flower  shows,  and  I  exclaim  over  and  rave  to  Anna, 
at  each  day's  novelty  in  blooms. 

Each  evening,  when  I  am  cooled  and  rested,  be- 
fore my  solitary  dinner,  I  watch  my  evening  prim- 
rose open ;  and  where  my  dining-room  and  drawing- 
room  engawa  (verandah)  meet,  I  have  a  dozen 
pots  of  trellised  moon-flowers  or  night-blooming 
ipomeas,  long  trumpets  of  buds  all  day  that 
open  at  dusk  into  spreading  white  corollas  as  large 
as  my  hand.  They  hang  motionless  in  the  warm, 
still,  night  air,  flowers  of  enchantment,  and  they 
are  so  placed,  that  when  the  moon  rose  last  week, 
the  white  light  of  heaven  fell  full  upon  the 
mysterious  blossoms.  I  lie  luxurious  in  my  long 
chair,  and  look  approvingly  on  my  little  drawing 
room  with  its  soft  grey  walls,  and  its  dark  brown 
ceiling,  a  glint  of  light  irradiating  the  gold 
screens  in  background.  I  look  approvingly  upon 
my  enchanted  garden,  my  tiny  paradise,  my  minia- 
ture Arcadia.  And  Vladimir !  No  further  away 
from  me  than  Villa  Lante  is  from  the  Garibaldi 
statue!  Vladimir  lying  on  a  high,  wooden  cot  in 
a  room  of  bare  pine  boards,  his  one  window  look- 
ing upon  a  little  court  of  bare  earth,  and  the 


MY  JAPANESE  HOME  97 

rough  walls  of  the  next  barrack!  And  what  has 
he  done?  What  crime  has  he  committed  to  be 
treated  so? — to  be  punished,  to  be  restrained  of 
his  liberty,  poor  helpless  wreck  of  a  man  that  he 
now  is — what  has  he  done? 

He  has  served  his  Czar  and  Russia.    That  is  all. 

But  bitter  reveries  lead  to  nothing,  and  I  try 
continually  to  lose  myself  in  my  immediate  sur- 
roundings, my  daily  work  and  occupations,  and 
not  to  look  forward.  For,  cut  off  from  and  buried 
from  all  our  own  world,  separated  from  each  other 
for  all  but  a  few  hours  of  the  day,  what  can  we 
base  our  hopes  and  plans  upon?  What  have  we 
to  live  for?  What  is  there  in  life  for  us? 

But,  we  are  together.  Mercifully,  the  Japa- 
nese permit  this.  Think,  if  I  were  not  allowed  to 
come  here,  not  to  see  him  during  all  his  time  of 
suffering!  He  would  die  surely.  He  would  have 
died  long  ago ! 

If  Vladimir  only  recovers !  If,  now  that  the 
hideous  cuts  and  wounds  are  healed,  the  bruised 
and  broken  ligaments,  the  stiffened  joints  and 
muscles  could  perform  their  work ;  if  the  shattered 
nerves  would  recover  tone  and  the  fever  cease  re- 
curring, what  more  could  I  ask  for?  But  the 
weak  digestion,  the  little  food  we  can  persuade 
him  to  take,  will  not  fortify  the  weak  body.  Each 
day,  when  I  go  to  his  little  room  and  see  him  still 
lying  there,  the  arms  inert,  only  a  thin,  white, 


98  AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

bloodless  finger  moving,  the  head  fixed  and  im- 
movable on  the  pillow,  the  great  eyes  in  the 
bleached  and  sunken  face  flashing  a  vivid  speech 
to  me,  as  they  follow  every  movement  in  the  room, 
I  feel  a  heart-sinking!  Shall  I  never  find  him 
sitting  up,  even  standing,  or  moving  about  the 
room  and  the  ward,  like  others  who  have  been 
brought  in  since  my  arrival?  Of  course,  the 
victories  will  all  be  ours,  as  soon  as  the  cold 
weather  comes,  for  the  cold  of  Siberia  and  Man- 
churia is  the  same,  and  of  course  the  Japanese 
troops  cannot  endure  that.  These  little  rice-fed 
manikins  in  cotton  clothes  will  be  in  sad  plight 
when  the  north  winds  begin  to  blow.  It  is  all  very 
well  for  them,  now  that  Manchuria  is  a  blazing 
furnace  deluged  with  typhoon  rainstorms.  They 
are  used  to  this.  Our  soldiers  will  thrive  on  the 
hoarfrosts  and  snowstorms,  huge,  fur-clad,  meat- 
eating  creatures  that  they  are. 

Watanabe  set  such  a  current  of  curio  dealers  in 
my  direction  that  my  little  house  is  getting  more 
attractive  each  day,  and  each  day  I  wish  more  and 
more  that  Vladimir  could  see  it.  It  is  a  solitary 
pleasure.  The  Japanese  ladies  who  called,  never 
noticed  my  Sotatsu  screens,  a  tangle  of  flowers  on 
gold-leaf  grounds.  The  high  military  officer,  who 
has  twice  called,  accompanied  by  his  Japanese- 
Russian  interpreter,  and  has  then  talked  bad  Ger- 
man with  me — save  when  we  all  three  talked 


MY  JAPANESE  HOME  99 

Japanese  together — paid  no  heed  to  my  precious 
flower  picture  in  the  deep  recess.  Young  Japan, 
who  studies  in  Europe,  is  a  graceless  wight  on 
the  subject  of  his  national  art.  He  knows  more 
of  Von  Moltke  and  Meckel,  than  of  Korin  or 
Sotatsu. 

It  was  a  shabby  little  schoolmaster,  in  pathetic 
black  broadcloth  clothes,  who  made  a  ceremonial 
call  on  me,  after  my  contributions  to  the  Red  Cross 
Society,  who  most  appreciated  my  treasures.  He 
drew  in  his  breath,  looked  incredulous,  and  really 
did  go  down  on  his  knees  to  my  precious  pictures — 
signed  with  that  awe-compelling  red  circle  and  the 
dagger-stroke  of  Korin — to  study  the  signature 
with  microscopic  closeness,  to  scrutinise  the  silk, 
its  edges,  and  each  detail  of  the  mounting.  All  in 
silence. 


CHAPTER  XI 
AFTER  LIAOYANG'S  BATTLE 

Sunday,  September  4th. 

IAOYANG,  the  headquarters,  is  abandoned, 
•*— '  and  Kuropatkin's  whole  army  has  re- 
treated to  Mukden ! — from  the  strong  place  he 
has  been  fortifying  for  six  months!  All  are 
depressed,  and  suffering  in  mind,  and  O'Shige  San 
told  me  on  my  arrival  that  all  the  big  children 
were  ydkamashi  (bothersome)  to-day.  Every 
wound  is  inflamed,  every  temperature  is  higher, 
every  ragged  nerve  is  straining.  I  have  hardly 
known  how  to  be  cheerful  before  Vladimir's  mourn- 
ful eyes,  nor  how  to  keep  him  occupied  with  other 
subjects,  so  that  he  may  not  talk  of  this  Liaoyang. 
Vladimir  sighs,  shuts  his  lips  tightly,  and  pitifully 
appeals  to  me:  "How  could  he  abandon  such  a 
place?  It  is  fortified  by  nature,  and  they  were 
building  forts  and  forts  all  around  the  circle  of 
hills,  when  I  first  arrived  there  from  Petersburg. 
I  saw  them  twice  again,  the  most  splendid  defences. 
It  was  impregnable  by  July.  I  would  have  held  it 
then  with  50,000  men  for  six  months.  Only  a  long 
siege  could  have  taken  it,  if  there  had  been  any 
100 


AFTER  LIAOYANG'S  BATTLE       101 

spirit  or  sense  in  the  army.  How  could  they,  how 
dare  they  abandon  it  and  all  the  stores  that  were 
accumulating  there?" 

Loris  tells  us  the  news,  and  all  that  he  has  to 
tell  inflames  the  wrath  of  Staff-Colonel  Grievsky, 
an  old  comrade  of  Vladimir's,  a  huge  blond  man 
from  Kiev,  whose  hands  and  feet — in  fact,  his  arms 
and  legs — stick  far  out  from  the  largest-sized  Red 
Cross  kimono  they  can  find  for  him. 

"Remembering  me  in  this,"  says  Grievsky, 
thrusting  out  his  bare  wrists  and  looking  down  at 
the  long  display  of  ankles,  "will  Sophia  Ivanovna 
ever  speak  to  me  when  we  meet  again  on  God's 
earth,  or  in  heaven,  or  in  Russia,  which  is  quite 
the  same  affair?" 

As  for  the  white  pastry  cook  caps  which  the 
Red  Cross  provides,  our  officers  will  not  wear  them 
at  all.  I  suggest  that  they  save  their  Red  Cross 
gowns  and  caps  for  future  use  at  fancy  dress 
balls,  and  they  scorn  the  suggestion.  "Never! 
Never  !  Never !"  they  say. 

I  urge  these  idle  disconsolates  to  form  a  Matsu- 
yama  club,  and  all  dine  together  in  Petersburg 
once  a  year  to  celebrate  the  triumphant  peace; 
and  they  say :  "No !  No !  No  !"  They  do  not  wish 
to  remember,  only  to  forget,  to  blot  out  the 
memory  of  these  humiliating  days.  When  the 
peace  comes,  they  want  to  see  all  Matsu- 
yama  razed  as  flat  as  the  Taku  forts,  and 


102          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

the  chateau  tumbled  into  the  sea — its  name 
taboo. 

Grievsky  rages  and  thunders  at  the  Russian 
enemies  of  Russia,  as  a  rest  from  reviling  America 
and  England.  The  perfidy  of  England  is  an  old 
story,  but  the  defection  of  America  rankles  with 
all  of  us.  Grievsky  has  thirsted  to  meet  an  Ameri- 
can and  upbraid  him  with  his  country's  baseness. 

He  does  not  count  the  Protestant  missionaries, 
who  live  here,  and  who  are  so  good  and  kind  to 
our  sick  ones,  as  enemies  of  Russia,  nor  blame  them 
for  being  Americans  at  all.  These  religious  ones, 
these  American  popes,  are  subjects  of  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven,  he  says.  They  are  like  people 
without  an  earthly  country.  They  have  put 
nationality  behind  them  in  their  vocation,  he  says ; 
and  he  puts  a  thousand  questions  to  the  Americans 
about  their  government,  their  parliament,  their 
elections.  He  startles  them  too  by  telling  them 
that  we  Russians  all  regard  their  Commodore 
Perry  as  an  interloper,  a  meddler.  Commodore 
Perry  should  not  have  rushed  in  and  opened  up 
Japan  as  he  did.  It  was  for  Russia  to  have  done 
that.  We  had  already  begun.  We  had  it  in  train 
at  the  very  time.  Trop  de  zele. 

Loris  and  Grievsky  are  of  one  mind  on  Russia's 
national  policy.  Both  have  always  been  violently 
opposed  to  the  whole  Manchurian  adventure. 
Russia's  true  interests  are  in  Persia  and  the 


AFTER  LIAO YANG'S  BATTLE   103 

Persian  Gulf,  they  say ;  and  all  this  digression  to 
the  frozen  end  of  far  Asia,  all  this  Manchurian 
madness,  has  been  time,  money,  and  opportunity 
thrown  away.  Beginning  with  Mouravieff,  they 
curse  with  fine  frenzy  all  who  have  ever  had  any- 
thing to  do  with  far  Siberian  affairs — De  Witte, 
Hilkoff,  Alexeieff,  and  Bezobrazoff.  They  detail, 
and  relate,  and  repeat  all  that  they  know  to  their 
detriment ;  and  all  Trans-Baikalia,  the  Amur,  and 
Ussuri  are  the  damned  provinces. 

"Had  Trans-Caspia  continued  to  occupy  Rus- 
sian statesmen,  had  they  remembered  Peter  the 
Great's  admonition,  we  should  long  ago  have  had 
railways  into  Persia,  across  Persia  to  the  Gulf, 
and  Russian  naval  stations  there,  face  to  face 
with  India.  And  then,"  says  Loris,  "Russia's 
'great  idea'  would  be  realised.  But — we  have  no 
statesmen  any  more — only  court  favourites  and 
speculators.  Since  Alexander  the  Liberator's 
death,  everything  has  gone  worse;  mediocrity  on 
top,  ability  below,  or — in  Kavkaz  and  Siberia. 
Our  brains  are  in  exile.  Petersburg  is  a  madhouse 
where  the  lunatics  themselves  are  in  charge.  And 
Nicholas  !  Well — Nicholas  is  blind.  Poor  fellow  ! 
He  indeed  rides  in  a  perambulator  still,  with  Marie 
Feodorovna  pushing  him." 

I  remember,  too,  when  Vladimir  finally  quitted 
the  diplomatic  service,  or  went  on  a  long  conge,  he 
said:  "I  have  no  pride  in  serving  the  Russian 


104          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

government  any  more.  The  government  is  a  self- 
willed,  selfish  woman-usurper,  and  a  wolf  pack  of 
Grand  Dukes.  We  are  little  better  off  than  the 
Chinese  with  their  Empress  Dowager.  Nicholas 
and  Kwangsu  are  autocrats  in  name  only.  L'Etat 
just  now  is  Marie  Feodorovna,  and  I  cannot  be 
loyal  to  her.  That  is  not  being  loyal  to  Russia. 
If  a  Czar  should  rule  again,  I  would  serve;  if 
enemies  rose,  if  war  came,  I  would  defend  my 
country." 

Grievsky  almost  weeps,  as  he  declares  Persia  is 
slipping  from  our  grasp,  and  Tibet  already  seized 
by  the  English,  while  we  are  occupied  with  this 
miserable  colonial  war. 

"Now  the  chance  of  Persia  is  going;  for,  with 
Russia's  longest  arm  busy  with  this  colonial  war 
in  Manchuria,  England  will  intrigue  against  us  in 
Afghanistan  and  confront  us  in  Persia.  Lord 
Curzon  is  plotting,  plotting  all  the  time  against 
us;  and  it  will  take  years  for  us  to  recover  our 
lost  ground.  Ah !  Ah !  Marie  Feodorovna  and  her 
circle!  Alexeieff  and  that  creature  Bezobrazoff ! 
They  are  Russia's  worst  enemies.  They  are  the 
traitors.  They  have  thrown  us  into  this  foolish 
war  with  Japan — and  all  about  that  cursed 
Manchuria  for  which  no  Russian  cares — that," 
snapping  his  fingers  like  the  crack  of  a  whip. 
"Ah!  Ah!"  and  he  ground  his  teeth  with  rage, 
"This  will  cost  us  Persia  and  all  our  chance  at 


AFTER  LIAOYANG'S  BATTLE       105 

India.  What  do  we  want  with  Manchuria?  You 
and  I  even?  Did  you  ever  hear  any  one  cry  for  it 
in  Russia?  Was  it  not  always  a  huge  sort  of  joke? 
Military  duty  there  a  little  better  than  the  Cau- 
casus— until  that  Peking  affair,  when  they  all 
got  so  much  loot.  Ah !  that  was  a  chance ! 

"And  we!  We!  We  endure  heat,  thirst,  and 
privations  in  Manchurian  camps  and  corn  fields. 
We  are  wounded,  mangled,  crippled,  made  cap- 
tives, and  dragged  to  Japanese  prisons.  And 
why?  For  what?  Because  Bezobrazoff  has 
promised  to  Serge  and  Vladimir  and  Alexis,  and 
Marie  Feodorovna,  and  Alexeieff  too,  great  money 
from  their  timber  lands  on  the  Yalu  River.  And 
what  need  could  there  be  for  this  timber?  What 
market  for  it,  if  there  were  not  Port  Arthur  and 
Dalny.  Who  wants  Dalny?  Who  made  Dalny? 
Who  else  but  De  Witte,  to  make  trade  and  give 
excuse  for  that  damned  railway?  And  who  wants 
Port  Arthur?  Only  Alexeieff  to  make  himself 
Viceroy  of  the  Far  East  and  to  kill  De  Witte's 
free  city  and  trade  port  in  the  next  bay.  Ah-h-h ! 
villains,  thieves,  scoundrels! 

"And  who  wanted  this  war?  Who  made  it? 
What  for?  Alexeieff  and  his  officers,  who  wanted 
promotions,  decorations,  contracts,  loot  of  any 
kind !  And  his  Novo  Krai!  The  censor  would  not 
have  let  it  live  in  Petersburg.  But  Alexeieff  was 
censor.  He  was  editor;  he  was  all  in  all.  Every 


106          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

day  he  threw  down  the  gauge  to  Japan  and  courted 
war.  Did  not  Paul  Lessar  warn  him?  Did  he  not 
implore  and  implore  Alexeieff  to  keep  the  pledges 
and  evacuate  Manchuria?  'Not  now,  not  forcibly, 
defiantly,'  he  said.  'Do  not  rouse  the  world. 
Slowly,  inevitably,  in  time,  we  shall  of  course  get 
Manchuria,'  said  Paul;  'but  do  not  let  us  get  all 
the  powers  down  on  us  for  broken  faith  and  broken 
pledges.'  He  begged,  he  wrote,  he  telegraphed, 
he  sent  couriers,  urging  Alexeieff  not  to  put  off  or 
refuse  evacuation ;  not  to  reoccupy  places  like 
Mukden  and  thereby  rebuff  America.  He  begged 
him,  too,  to  stop  the  Novo  Krai's  recklessness,  to 
be  more  cautious  since  all  the  East  knew  it  to  be 
his  mouthpiece.  And  then  Alexeieff  himself  wrote 
that  thing  in  the  Novo  Krai,  the  lJ'y  suis  et  j'y 
reste*  article,  and  marked  it,  and  sent  it  to  Paul 
Lessar,  as  answer.  Poor  Paul !  Poor  Paul !  To 
live  for  this  !  to  die  by  inches  seeing  it ! 

"Ah !  Scoundrels  !  Scoundrels  !  I  wish  all  that 
Yalu  and  Port  Arthur  crowd  were  here.  Here ! 
Here !  As  I  am  here,"  he  fairly  roared,  pounding 
his  hand  on  the  table.  "They  deserve  it.  Not  I. 
Not  I.  Not  your  husband,  either,  Madame.  We 
are  the  victims,  the  sport  of  their  ventures  of 
greed.  Yes,  greed." 

Poor  Grievsky!  Such  a  frank,  sunny,  happy 
temperament,  if  it  were  not  clouded  by  his  suffer- 
ings of  body  and  mind,  his  humiliation,  and  his 


AFTER  LIAOYANG'S  BATTLE       107 

fretting  at  this  inactivity,  when  there  is  hard 
fighting  and  hard  work  for  good  Russians  to  do. 
Vladimir  says  that  no  one  so  loves  a  good  fight  for 
the  sheer  love  of  fighting  as  Grievsky.  The  bang 
of  shot  and  clash  of  steel  and  smell  of  powder 
are  more  than  food  and  drink  to  him.  They  are 
the  wine  of  life,  intoxicants.  Grievsky  in  battle  or 
skirmish  is  a  very  god  of  war  and  giant  of  bat- 
tles, electrified,  intensified,  his  face  illumined  with 
exaltation,  his  voice  a  clarion  that  inspires  the 
men.  They  were  together  years  ago  in  Ferghana 
— Vladimir,  Grievsky,  and  dear  old  Paul  Lessar. 
There  they  knew  Kuropatkin  too.  In  these  de- 
spairing times,  it  is  a  pleasure  for  Vladimir  and 
Grievsky  to  turn  from  the  present  and  live  over 
the  old,  triumphant,  Turcoman  days.  They  had 
only  victories  there  and — all  the  world  was  young 
then.  Grievsky  stayed  on  in  Turkestan,  and  in 
Ferghana ;  he  built  more  railways  and  more  forts, 
and  laid  out  lines  of  canals;  surveyed  with  the 
Pamir  Boundary  Commission,  and,  as  he  said, 
acted  as  guide  and  host  for  exiled  Grand  Dukes, 
explorers,  scientists,  and  butterfly-catchers  from 
all  countries.  We  laugh  at  his  accounts  of  the 
explorers  who  came  to  him  wanting  to  explore 
Tibet. 

"Ah,  Gott !  I  was  only  a  forwarding  agent, 
an  innkeeper  for  the  explorers.  I  ran  an  excur- 
sion bureau  there  in  Ferghana. 


108          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

"It  would  have  paid  even  to  have  built  a  railway 
to  Lhassa,  solely  to  accommodate  the  many  gentle- 
men-explorers, the  discoverers  of  an  unknown 
country.  I  was  'Thos.  Cooks  &  Sons,  Limited,'  for 
the  'Roof  of  the  World.'  There  were  all  kinds, 
even  women — all  nations.  They  all  wanted  to  go 
to  Lhassa.  Every  fool  was  sure  he  would  succeed, 
where  other  fools  had  failed.  I  got  them  their 
caravan  leaders,  and  their  servants,  their  animals, 
their  stores,  and  I  started  them  off.  Oh!  Speed 
to  the  parting  guest !  as  you  English  say.  They 
never  got  to  Lhassa,  of  course,  although  it  was  a 
dull  season  in  Samarcand  and  Kashgar  when  I 
did  not  have  two  or  more  Lhassa  excursions  on  my 
hands.  And  most  of  them  returned  to  my  shelter- 
ing arms  !  Poor  fluttering  birds  of  search !  They 
had  excuses,  they  had  Tibetan  teapots  and  tur- 
quoises, trumpets  of  thigh  bones,  and  skull  drums, 
and — much  experience.  And  Lord!  What  it 
must  have  cost  them  to  go  on  their  cold  picnics ! 
Roubles,  and  roubles,  and  roubles !  Think  of 
shivering  in  a  tent  with  a  cup  of  tea  and  tallow 
at  your  own  command  and  at  your  own  expense, 
when  there  is  champagne  in  Paris  for  half  the 
price!  Ah!  there  are  so  many  kinds  of  madmen 
running  loose  nowadays  !  We  saw  all  these  madmen 
off  with  a  last  dinner,  and  they  returned,  hairy  and 
hungry,  dazed  at  the  sight  of  a  civilised  table 
again.  And  God!  How  they  could  drink  the 


AFTER  LIAOYANG'S  BATTLE       109 

champagne  after  a  little  of  the  Pamirs  and  Lop 
Nor! 

"There  were  all  kinds — Germans  in  spectacles, 
with  their  specimen  boxes  hung  all  around  them; 
and  Frenchmen — let  me  not  speak  disrespectfully 
of  our  flat-chested,  but  richly-investing  allies — 
and  Englishmen  !  Englishmen !  and  Englishmen  ! 
until  I  thought  I  should  go  mad;  and  they,  those 
Johnnies  Bulls !  they  all  came  with  letters  to  me ! 
To  me!  As  if  it  were  a  deliberate  joke.  Bah! 
Those  fellows  in  Petersburg  did  it  on  purpose. 
Those  British  spies  told  me  that  Prof.  This  and 
Dr.  That,  in  Petersburg,  had  told  them  that  I 
knew  it  all,  and  they  sat  and  admired  me,  and 
opened  their  ears,  all  the  valves  in  their  ears,  to 
hear  what  I  should  say.  Curse  their  souls ! 

"I  knew  then  they  were  only  spies.  And  I ! 
Even  I,  ran  with  Mr.  George  Curzon !  My  Lord 
Curzon  he  is  now.  He,  who  would  keep  us  out  of 
Persia,  and  drive  us  out  of  all  Trans-Caspia — if  he 
could.  He,  who  will  not  hesitate  to  undermine  us 
in  every  way,  now  that  Kuropatkin  is  tied  up, 
hand  and  foot,  in  this  accursed  Manchurian  mess. 
Lord  Curzon  !  The  Viceroy  of  India !  Who  could 
think  it  then?  The  pale,  little  university  student, 
who  was  writing  in  the  London  Times,  and  wanted 
to  find  the  source  of  the  Oxus,  and  the  course  of 
the  Pamirs,  and  the  lord  devil  knows  what  not. 
Ah!  Spy!  Spy!  I  could  wring  his  miserable 


110          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

neck,  if  I  could  but  see  him  now.  Would  I  lend  him 
my  horses,  my  maps,  my  everything  again?  A 
Viceroy  of  India  in  disguise!  And  I  his  tool,  his 
fool !  Ah !  Ah  !  Grievsky  you  deserve  all  this — 
this,  the  convict  dress,  the  sentry  at  the  door,  the 
high  fence !  And  Mr.  George  Curzon  should  come, 
and  see,  to  make  the  comedy  complete !" 

Lord  Curzon  and  Commodore  Perry  his  equal 
abominations. 


CHAPTER  XII 
THE  SEPTEMBER  MOON 

Thursday,  September  15th. 

THE  chief-surgeon  has  said,  that  in  time  they 
hope  to  let  me  remove  Vladimir  to  my  house, 
and  continue  his  nursing  there.  He  must  give  his 
parole  that  he  will  keep  the  same  hours  and  re- 
strictions as  the  other  officers  in  detention  at  the 
Town  Hall.  I  shall  be  his  jailer,  and  responsible 
to  the  Japanese  Government  for  him.  I  nearly 
fainted  with  joy  when  I  heard  it,  and  Vladimir 
gave  a  great  sigh  of  relief. 

"I  shall  see  that  garden  then.  And  we  shall 
live,  Sophia.  It  will  be  a  home.  I  shall  never  com- 
plain then.  How  pleasant  it  will  be  to  leave  all 
this,  the  bare  walls,  the  sounding  floors,  the  noisy, 
grumbling  men ;  to  go  to  the  clean,  quiet,  little 
Japanese  house  and  live  stocking-footed — to  watch 
the  goldfish,  and  the  birds,  and  the  'morning  face' 
flowers.  I  feel  better  now." 

The  surgeon  said:  "I  am  recommending  that  he 

be  isolated  from  the  ward.     He  must  have  quiet, 

and  be  free  from  fretting  and  excitement.     They 

talk  too  much,  all  these  friends  of  his.    As  soon  as 

111 


112          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

his  wounds  are  healed,  and  he  is  out  of  his  plaster 
casings,  we  can  turn  him  over  to  you  as  his  skilled 
masseuse.  I  have  two  cases  now  that  I  shall  ask 
you  to  help  the  nurses  with.  In  that  way  you 
will  learn  the  treatment,  and  I  can  advise  to  the 
commander  that  we  give  the  honourable  colonel  to 
treatment  in  a  private  ward,  to  make  the  room 
which  we  shall  soon  need  at  the  barracks. 

"We  are  short  of  nurses,  and  short  of  inter- 
preters for  all  the  sick  ones  who  will  arrive  here 
this  week,  and  if  you  will  be  so  good  as  to  go  with 
the  Red  Cross  ladies  to  Takahama  to  receive 
transports,  you  can  help  us  very  much.  And 
afterwards,  if  you  are  not  too  fatigued,  we  may 
wish  you  to  interpret  a  little  for  us  at  the  bar- 
racks here.  There  are  so  many  wounded  coming, 
and  the  doctors  and  nurses  are  not  speaking  your 
language  enough  yet.  You  are  much  cleverer, 
Madame  von  Theill,  in  learning  the  Japanese  than 
our  people  are  in  learning  Russian.  However 
have  you  done  it?  We  have  never  known  a 
foreigner  to  speak  like  you  in  only  a  month." 

To  have  Vladimir  all  to  myself  again,  and  nurse 
him  back  to  health  quietly  in  my  own  little  villa! 
To  be  alone  by  ourselves !  To  speak  without  being 
overheard !  To  have  absolute  quiet  around  us ! 
What  joy  that  will  be!  And  to  be  allowed  to  help 
with  our  wounded  Russians  is  a  privilege  indeed. 
How  glad  I  am  that  I  have  taken  Vladimir's  ad- 


THE  SEPTEMBER  MOON  113 

vice  and  never  asked  for  anything,  nor  complained 
of  anything !  Now  that  I  have  not  proved  a 
nuisance,  they  will  let  me  be  a  helper.  How  truly 
good  and  kind  the  Japanese  are — as  individuals ! 
But  the  people  and  their  government  are  always 
two  different  things.  Look  at  us  !  See  Russia ! 

The  season  seems  going  rapidly  now,  and  with 
the  changes  in  the  face  of  nature,  I  feel  that  time 
is  hastening  as  I  want  it  to.  The  lake  of  emerald- 
green  rice,  that  rippled  in  the  warm  breeze  that 
day  I  rode  up  from  Takahama  on  the  toy  train, 
is  now  a  lake  of  golden  yellow  grain. 

Loris,  who  knows  a  little  of  peasant  life  and  the 
growing  of  crops  in  all  countries,  has  always  some 
new  fact  in  agriculture  to  communicate  to 
Beletsky  when  he  comes  to  see  him,  and  Beletsky 
longs  for  the  time  when  he  can  ride  out  and  see 
the  Japanese  at  work  in  the  fields,  caressing  and 
tending  each  rice  stalk  individually.  "We  have  no 
idea  of  work  in  Russia,"  says  Loris,  "of  work  as 
a  fine  art,  of  work  lavished  on  the  crops  and  the 
land  for  love  of  it.  Our  peasants  plough,  and 
plant,  and  reap  mechanically,  with  their  muscles 
only,  with  no  more  mind,  feeling,  comprehension,  or 
soul  than  the  horses  that  pull  the  huge  American 
machines  through  our  wheat  fields.  The  Japanese 
lavish  more  work  on  a  single  crop,  they  do  more 
working  of  the  soil,  more  weeding  and  tending, 
more  trimming  and  straightening  to  one  grain 


114          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

crop  than  our  peasants  give  to  ten  crops.  They 
pet  their  sheaves  of  rice  like  children.  They  coax 
them,  talk  to  them,  pray  to  the  gods  for  them,  and 
bring  charms  from  the  temple  to  protect  them; 
and  carry  the  very  first  ripe  ears  to  the  temple 
as  offerings.  It  is  no  wonder  that  the  seed  grain 
responds  with  its  best. 

"It  is  the  sight  of  a  life  to  watch  these  Japanese 
in  the  fields.  Work,  work,  work!  Wade  in  the 
mud,  grub  among  the  roots,  all  day,  every  day. 
I  only  wish  I  could  have  watched  the  whole  thing ; 
seen  the  rice  sown  in  the  seed  beds  and  then  trans- 
planted, but  it  was  yellowing  when  I  arrived. 
And  the  harvest!  What  a  sight!  All  these  dull 
blue  figures  among  the  yellow  stubble !  And  then 
the  dooryard  scenes,  as  they  beat  and  winnow  the 
grain  in  full  view,  in  the  open  sunshine !  Bronze 
men  and  bronze  women,  with  the  sunshine  on  their 
fine  bronze  bodies.  Ah!  it  is  superb.  Consider 
Millet's  draped  peasants  in  their  turnip  fields! 
Bah !  And  we  never  understood,  we  never  knew 
about  these  Japanese  in  Russia.  The  Japanese 
make  their  war  over  there  in  Manchuria  just  as 
they  work  these  rice  fields,  thoroughly,  intently, 
intelligently,  with  loving  devotion  all  the  time. 
Our  mujiks  might  as  well  lay  down  their  rifles  now 
and  go  home.  They  will  never  conquer  these 
people.  Victory  is  not  with  us.  Man  to  man, 
officer  to  officer,  peasant  to  peasant,  we  are  no 


THE  SEPTEMBER  MOON  115 

match  for  them.  These  are  the  people  of  the 
twentieth  century,  and  we  are  of  the  eighteenth 
only.  Ah  !  Curse  the  luck  !" 


The  dear  little  volunteer  nurse,  who  attracted 
me  so  when  the  committee  of  ladies  came  to  thank 
me  at  my  house,  is  at  the  barracks  on  duty  each 
alternate  week,  and  often  comes  to  speak  to  me, 
to  inquire  for  Vladimir  and  to  bring  him  a  flower. 
Her  husband  is  a  son  of  the  new  daimio,  and  is 
an  officer  at  the  front  in  Manchuria.  The  other 
night  we  both  stopped  to  admire  a  rosy  young 
moon  balancing  on  the  ridge  of  the  eastern  hills. 
"Next  week  there  is  the  moon-viewing  night.  You 
will  come  with  me  to  see?"  and  I  gladly  assented. 

The  next  day  she  told  me  much  about  this  great 
September  moon;  told  me  as  much  as  my  limited 
and  practical  vocabulary  could  let  me  know  of 
poetic  things.  It  is  the  moon  of  moons,  the  best 
loved  moon  of  all  the  year,  and  the  poet's  moon  in 
Japan.  I  have  watched  my  great  white  moon 
flowers  in  the  moonlight  for  several  nights;  and 
later,  from  my  balcony,  have  pushed  the  amados 
wider,  to  see  the  picturesque  castle  and  the  black 
pine  trees  swimming  in  silver  air  against  a  dark 
azure  sky.  But  for  this  fifteenth  night  of  the 
September  moon,  when  the  great  disc  is  completely 


116          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

round,  all  Matsuyama  gathers  on  the  castle  hill, 
or  on  the  far  hill  across  the  railway  track,  to 
watch  the  moon  rise  behind  the  Dogo  hills. 

After  dark  she  rumbled  in  under  my  gateway 
and  carried  me  off  with  her.  Anna's  bewildered 
face  gave  me  the  sense  of  being  off  on  an  ad- 
venture, and  my  spirits  took  on  such  a  leap  of 
elation,  as  the  kurumas  sped  through  the  streets 
and  around  two  long  sides  of  the  moat,  that  I  had 
forgotten  all  worry  and  trials  as  we  ran  through 
a  long  street  of  shops  and  came  to  the  foot  of  the 
abrupt  castle  hill,  darkly  clothed  with  its  ancient 
pines.  We  went  up  a  stone  staircase  and  steep 
paths  through  the  trees,  then  up  more  staircases 
and  tree-shaded  paths,  with  the  kurumaya's  lan- 
terns bobbing  beside  and  before  us  like  big  glow- 
worms in  the  warm  darkness.  The  moist  fragrance 
of  the  pines,  the  soft  voice  of  my  little  Red  Cross 
sister,  and  the  respectfully  hushed  voices  of  our 
attendants,  all  fell  upon  me  with  charm  unspeak- 
able, and  I  was  consciously  happy. 

We  came  out  on  the  broad  terrace  that  I  have 
often  looked  up  to  wonderingly,  and  then  we 
looked  out,  from  high  in  air,  over  the  city  of 
dotted  lights,  and  over  the  dark  plain  with 
shadowy  hills  beyond.  Scores  of  people  were  sit- 
ting there  on  cushions  and  red  blankets.  A 
perambulating  restaurateur  had  brought  up  his 
twin  boxes,  and  from  those  magic  treasuries  had 


THE  SEPTEMBER  MOON  117 

(distributed  tea  trays  for  all  the  company,  and 
the  moon-worshippers  were  amusing  themselves 
with  doll  wafers  and  fairy  cups  of  tea  and  other 
aesthetic  imitations  of  real  food,  as  it  seems  to  us 
bulk-consuming,  barbarian  peoples. 

Towards  Dogo,  the  mountain  rim  was  more 
sharply  cut  against  the  dusky,  violet-indigo  sky, 
patterned  with  faint  constellations.  Over  there, 
the  moon  was  getting  ready  to  rise;  and  when  we 
had  recovered  breath  and  fanned  ourselves  cool, 
we  went  through  a  mediaeval  gateway,  climbed  some 
broad  stone  steps,  between  the  black  walls  of  the 
old  castle's  barracks,  turned  a  court  and  another 
gate,  and  came  out  on  a  long  terrace — a  hanging 
garden. 

There  was  a  company  of  quiet  Japanese  people 
there,  grave  old  men  and  quiet,  shadowy  women  in 
dark  kimonos,  and  they  gave  me,  one  by  one, 
ceremonious  greetings.  They  were  cordial  and 
kindly  beyond  believing.  Each  one,  during  the 
evening,  came  and  made  some  second  little  speech 
of  greeting;  inquired  for  Vladimir  and  the  sick 
ones  at  the  barracks ;  wished  for  their  recovery  and 
comfort,  and  told  me  some  other  pretty,  picturesque 
thing  about  the  moon-viewing  custom.  It  took 
me  all  evening  to  put  things  together,  and  make 
out  that  I  was  the  guest  of  Matsuyama's  highest 
circle;  that  my  little  Red  Cross  colleague  was  a 
true  daughter  of  a  daimio  in  the  highest  sense, 


118          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

since  she  stays  here  to  work  for  lyo  soldiers' 
families,  while  her  husband  is  at  the  front ;  and 
that  nearly  all  the  company  was  composed  of  the 
kinfolk  of  the  two  daimio  families,  who  ruled  this 
rich  province  before  the  Restoration.  It  was  a 
"black"  Vatican  company,  a  gathering  of  the 
ancienne  noblesse  of  the  Faubourg  St.  Germain, 
there  on  the  lyo  heights,  and  the  daimios'  old 
poetry-teacher,  in  his  Chinese-cut  coat  of  dark 
gauze,  his  mitre  cap,  with  long  white  beard  and 
staff,  looked  like  Jurojin  himself.  He  only  needed 
the  spotted  deer  to  complete  the  picture  of  the 
God  of  Wisdom,  Learning,  and  Longevity  come  to 
life. 

We  moved  slowly  along  the  high  terrace.  A 
wall  on  one  side,  starry  space  on  the  other;  and 
the  lights  of  the  town  glimmered  as  if  they  were 
but  stars  reflected  in  the  dark  pool  of  the  rice 
plain  far  below  us. 

We  were  somewhere  above  my  own  house,  my 
tiny  garden  of  camellia  hedges,  of  moon  flowers 
and  asagaos;  and  by  the  outlines  of  the  hills,  I 
knew  that  a  turn  to  the  right  would  bring  me  over 
the  barracks  where  Vladimir  lay — Vladimir  suffer- 
ing in  the  stuffy  alcove  of  his  ward,  with  lights 
and  voices,  noise  and  confusion  around  his  tired 
head  and  bruised  nerves,  and  I  here,  high  in  the 
cool  starlight  with  poets !  My  heart  sank  with  a 
guilty  feeling,  with  a  remorse  for  my  being  up 


THE  SEPTEMBER  MOON  119 

there  to  enjoy  freely  the  fragrant  darkness,  with 
the  cool  shadow  and  silence  of  the  castle  walls  and 
embankments  beside  me,  in  a  company  of  soft- 
voiced  poets.  And  they  were  Japanese  poets ! 
Ah !  Japanese !  Japanese !  My  enemies !  Vladi- 
mir's assailants,  and  Vladimir's  enemies !  Was  it 
right  for  me  to  be  there  with  them?  Could  it  ever 
seem  right  for  him  to  be  there  at  the  barracks, 
beaten,  bruised,  maimed,  perhaps  crippled  for  life, 
by  these  same  people?  Perhaps  Colonel  Takasu, 
himself,  had  captured  him ;  perhaps  lyo  soldiers 
had  clubbed  him  to  unconsciousness,  when  he  would 
not  yield  and  surrender.  Maybe  Colonel  Takasu 
was  the  officer  whom  he  had  resisted  in  arrest,  for 
which  they  threatened  Vladimir  with  a  court- 
martial  and  the  death  penalty  over  there  in  Man- 
churia. 

But  these  wild  notions  left  when  we  entered 
another  deep  gateway,  and  came  into  the  court- 
yard of  the  citadel  itself,  and  I  could  see  straight 
above  me  the  fantastic  gables,  set  one  astride  the 
ridge  line  of  the  other,  that  I  had  so  often  admired 
from  below.  Then  we  went  into  the  dark  and 
echoing  interior,  to  vast  halls  and  galleries,  half 
seen  in  the  lantern  light  by  which  we  climbed  steep 
stairs  to  the  first  room  of  the  great  tower  open 
on  all  four  sides  to  the  night  sky.  We  climbed  to 
a  second  story  where  the  east-facing  windows  were 
pushed  wide,  and  we  sat  on  cushions  on  the  floor, 


120          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

and  watched  the  outlines  of  the  hills  grow  sharper 
and  clearer  against  a  dusky  blue,  silver-lighted 
sky.  An  electric  flash  came  as  the  great  yellow- 
white  disc  of  the  September  moon  first  showed  on 
the  mountain's  edge,  and  quickly  the  whole  round 
splendour  rose,  poised  on  the  fantastic  peak,  and 
soared  up  into  the  shadowy  azure,  the  bluish, 
grape-coloured  sky.  "Ah !  Ah !"  sighed  my  com- 
panions around  me  softly,  with  intense  joy  in  the 
beauty  and  the  sentiment  of  the  scene;  and  I 
found  myself  swept  with  them  upon  the  same  high, 
exquisite  plane  of  feeling  and  emotion.  There  was 
grave  silence,  the  tap-tap  of  a  tiny  pipe,  lighted 
without  sound  against  the  burning  coal  buried  in 
the  hibachi's  ashes,  the  only  break  in  the  harmony 
of  stillness. 

The  great  moon,  not  cold  and  silvery  white  like 
our  frosty  Russian  moon,  glowed  golden  and  re- 
fulgent, glorious  as  the  moon  of  Italy  in  mid-air, 
and  sent  down  a  mellowed  daylight,  first  upon 
Dogo's  clustered  houses  and  tree  masses,  and  then 
on  the  level  of  the  golden  rice  plain,  distinctly  yel- 
low in  the  moonlight,  cut  with  dark  lines  and  divided 
by  the  broad  white  Dogo  road.  It  was  enchant- 
ment— a  midsummer  night's  dream — old  Japan — 
ideal,  poetic  Japan — and  I  a  Philistine  snatched 
up  to  this  height  by  Heaven's  favour,  for  my  soul's 
expanding  to  this  rare  night's  opportunity.  I  sat 
thrilled  through  and  was  soon  choking  with  an 


THE  SEPTEMBER  MOON  121 

unreasonable  melancholy  and  emotion;  and,  as 
from  a  trance,  I  came  down  from  the  heights  of 
the  soul,  and  found  myself  weeping  in  a  company 
of  Vladimir's  enemies — and  he,  stricken  and  suffer- 
ing, somewhere  in  the  long  buildings  showing 
dimly  in  the  night-azure,  Cazin  landscape  im- 
mediately below  us. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
THE  LIAOYANG  MEN 

September  28th. 

A  NOTHER  day,  I  did  my  day's  work  in  the 
*•  **  Red  Cross  tents  at  Takahama,  and  from 
noon  until  four  o'clock  saw  the  wounded  from 
Liaoyang  brought  ashore,  fed,  bandaged,  and 
ministered  to,  until  they  were  put  in  the  little 
train.  They  were  pitiful  in  their  weakness  and 
dejection;  many  of  the  rank  and  file  not  yet  con- 
vinced that  the  evil  little  pigmies  would  not  cut 
them  in  strips  and  torture  them.  The  officers, 
poor  fellows,  were  stung  with  chagrin,  with 
humiliation  unspeakable;  and  to  many  wounded 
pride  was  as  acute  a  suffering  as  the  shooting 
pains  and  throbs  of  agony  in  their  wounded  bodies. 
Hopeless,  despondent,  heart-sick,  and  suffering, 
they  lay  with  their  eyes  closed,  not  caring  to  see 
the  beautiful  green  hills  and  blue  water  around 
them,  after  the  hideous  bare  hills  and  muddy 
shores  of  Manchuria.  It  was  a  pleasure  to  speak 
to  these  inert  ones,  and  see  the  faces  waken  at 
sound  of  the  Russian  language.  "Ah!  God! 
132 


THE  LIAOYANG  MEN  123 

to  hear  my  own  tongue  again,  after  these  days 
and  days !  Is  this  really  Japan  ?  You  are  a 
Russian  woman !  Where  did  you  come  from  ? 
Are  you,  too,  prisoner?" 

And  when  I  told  them  about  myself,  they  mar- 
velled greatly.  They  could  hardly  believe  that  the 
Japanese  let  me  stay  here  and  tend  my  wounded 
husband  daily,  or  that  I  was  safe.  "Yes !  they 
have  certainly  surprised  me,  for  they  were  kind  to 
us  all  the  time.  We  have  been  treated  as  their  own 
wounded;  and  when  we  have  groaned  in  the  rail- 
way carriage  coming  down  to  Dalny,  they  have 
said,  truly,  that  our  own  wounded  Russians  were 
no  better  off  among  our  own  people.  Ah !  that 
railway  ride  was  hardest !  How  I  wished  they  had 
bayoneted  me  on  the  field  where  they  found  me, 
as  our  Cossacks  do.  I  expected  that.  I  did  not 
expect  them  to  pick  me  up,  and  carry  me  to  the 
surgeon,  and  dress  my  wounds ;  feed  and  fan  me, 
put  a  cigarette  in  my  mouth  and  light  it  for  me. 
Then  a  French-speaking  interpreter  came  and 
asked  me  if  I  would  like  to  go  to  the  expense  of  a 
telegram  to  my  family,  lest  they  be  alarmed  from 
the  Russian  report  of  missing.  It  was  all  very 
strange,  very  surprising  to  me.  And  that  they  let 
you  stay  here  is  more  surprising  still.  I  don't 
understand  these  Japanese  at  all.  I  never  heard 
of  such  Japanese  before  I  came  here." 

He  wanted  to  talk  more  and  all  the  time,  but  I 


124          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

told  the  ladies  a  little  of  what  he  had  said,  and 
they  eagerly  took  my  place,  to  do  more  for  him,  to 
heap  surprises  upon  him. 

It  was  too  late  that  day  for  me  to  go  to  the 
barracks  when  I  got  back,  but  Anna  had  gone, 
and  looked  after  Vladimir.  The  first  of  the  new 
arrivals  had  reached  their  wards  before  she  left. 
"No  sleep  to-night,  barina,"  said  Anna.  "They 
are  all  wild  to  hear  the  newcomers.  And  I  do  not 
think  it  is  good  news,  because  they  are  very  still, 
and  listen  quietly  to  what  the  sick  man  says." 

It  could  not  indeed  be  good  news.  It  was  the 
same  sickening  recital  of  stupidity,  and  blunder- 
ing, and  hesitation — of  reinforcements  not  ready 
in  time;  of  peevish,  pettish  officers  abandoning 
strong  places  to  spite  and  pay  back  the  com- 
mander, and  thus  precipitating  failure,  ultimate 
flight.  They  had  so  nearly  caused  the  capture, 
the  inglorious  surrender  of  the  commander  and  his 
staff,  that  some  of  the  wounded  were  only  assured 
of  Kuropatkin's  safety,  after  they  reached  this 
hospital. 

The  sick  man  told  how  the  commissariat  failed 
them  and  how  they  picked  the  millet  heads,  and 
ate  raw  grain  for  the  two  days  of  fighting.  He 
held  trenches  on  a  hill  that  commanded  the  key  to 
the  Russian  defence  and  the  whole  position.  That 
night  they  were  to  crawl  down  for  water,  but  the 
whole  company  crawled  down  and  away ;  scattered 


THE  LIAOYANG  MEN  125 

and  refused  to  return;  and  daybreak  saw  the 
Japanese  safely  in  occupation,  without  firing  a 
shot.  "I  raved,  I  stormed,  I  cursed,  I  beat  them, 
but  it  was  only  'Niet!  Niet!'  I  could  not  drive 
them,  they  were  too  ready  to  turn  on  me.  Ah !  if 
it  were  not  for  this  getting  killed,  how  our  Rus- 
sians would  fight! 

"I  sat  down  and  wept,  and  only  my  servant, 
dragging  me  by  main  force,  could  make  me  realise 
that  the  Japanese  were  upon  us.  Upon  us  !  They 
were  all  around  us ;  and  they  bagged  the  last  of 
my  mutinous  men,  who  ran  into  the  arms  of  a 
flanking  party  that  came  out  of  the  kaoliang,  as 
if  out  of  dense  woods.  So,  here  I  am — a  flesh 
wound  in  the  arm  and  a  bullet  through  the  leg — 
wounds  that  will  heal  in  a  fortnight.  But  I  am 
to  stay  here,  in  prison,  until  the  end  of  the  war. 
Stay  here  until  Kuropatkin  retreats  to  Lake 
Baikal !  Ah-h !  It  is  too  much." 

"But,"  we  all  said,  "we  keep  our  courage  up  by 
counting  on  a  speedy  rescue  by  the  Vladivostok 
fleet.  Skrydloff's  next  raid  will  be  down  this  west 
coast.  We  can  only  dream  of  our  release,  and  of 
Russian  victories  on  Japanese  soil — a  Russian 
occupation  of  Tokyo !  The  loot  of  Tokyo,  a 
richer  prize  than  the  loot  of  Peking.  We  will  get 
it." 

"Never!  Never!  By  all  the  saints,  never! 
There  will  be  a  Japanese  occupation  of  Petersburg 


126          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

first.  We  can  no  more  win  a  war  against  these 
cursedly  clever  generals,  these  intelligent  armies, 
against  these  hard-working,  incessantly-studying, 
scientific  soldiers,  than  the  Turcomans,  with  their 
flint-locks,  could  win  against  Skobeleff  and  his 
machine  guns.  Only  a  miracle  can  save  us  now. 
Skobeleff  on  his  white  horse,  or  Alexander  Nevski 
will  have  to  appear  and  head  our  columns  to  carry 
our  flag  back  even  to  Liaoyang  or  the  coal  mines. 
What  have  we  done  but  retreat !  withdraw  and 
run !  Run !  and  run  faster  still,  ever  since  that 
day  on  the  Yalu  River?  It  has  been  one  long 
story  of  stupidity,  inefficiency,  unpreparedness, 
shameful  failure  and  defeat.  The  Japanese  have 
landed  armies  where  they  chose,  and  gone  along 
quite  as  they  pleased;  pushing  our  headquarters 
ahead  of  them — from  Yinkow  to  Haicheng,  to 
Liaoyang,  to  Mukden !  And  how  soon  will  we  be 
driven  out  of  that,  and  Harbin  too? 

"And  our  generals  shrug  their  shoulders,  and 
say  they  are  unprepared!  Ach  Gottl  Unpre- 
pared! What  have  we  ever  done  in  Russia  but 
prepare?  I  have  studied,  and  drilled,  and  prac- 
tised, and  prepared  for  war  all  my  life.  What  is 
the  standing  army,  the  conscription  for,  if  it  is 
not  preparation  for  war?  We  were  prepared  on 
paper.  Oh !  yes !  And  have  we  not  been  getting 
prepared  for  this  war  every  minute  since  the  siege 
of  Tien  Tsin?  Of  what  did  all  the  casernes,  and 


THE  LIAOYANG  MEN  127 

canteens,  and  messes,  and  clubs  talk  in  Peking, 
that  winter  after  the  siege,  but  of  the  coming  war 
between  Russia  arid  Japan?  Every  one  in  Port 
Arthur  knew  it.  The  Viceroy  knew  it.  He 
counted  on  it.  He  told  again  and  again  how  long 
it  would  last.  He  disclosed  his  plans  confidentially 
every  midnight. 

"And  then  Kuropatkin  came  out;  and  he 
looked  over  the  forts  in  Manchuria,  and  he  listened 
to  Alexeieff,  to  that  sailor  on  horseback,  who  knew 
no  more  about  the  Japanese  army  establishment 
than  he  does  of  the  Patagonian  army,  if  there  is 
one.  Kuropatkin  was  slow,  and  he  wanted  to  be 
sure ;  and  he  asked  to  see  the  forts  at  Port  Arthur, 
and  they  brought  him  maps,  maps,  maps.  'No,' 
said  he.  'Come  let  us  take  a  walk,'  and  that 
hot  May  day,  he  made  them  all  climb  to  the 
Chinese  wall,  and  walk  over  all  that  rough  ground 
toward  the  west.  While  the  engineers  perspired 
and  explained  to  Kuropatkin,  the  Viceroy  was 
down  in  the  cool  palace.  'And  now,'  said  Kuro- 
patkin, 'where  is  the  fort  "K"?' 

"  'At  your  very  feet,  your  Excellency.  Where 
you  stand  is  the  site,  and  these  are  the  plans — a 
lunette — a ' 

"  'Damnation,'  says  his  Excellency,  the  Minister 
of  War,  'show  me  no  plans,  no  paper  forts. 
Where  are  the  guns?  Eight-centimetre  guns? 
They  left  Kronstadt  months  ago.' 


128          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

"  'They  are  in  the  storehouses,  below  there, 
your  Excellency.' 

"  'Very  well,'  he  roared.  'When  they  are 
mounted  here,  we  will  call  it  a  fort  and  talk  of  a 
campaign.  You  must  be  ready  to  defend  before 
you  attack.  The  war,  when  it  comes,  will  not  all 
be  a  quick  descent  upon  Nagasaki  and  a  gay 
march  over  to  Tokyo.  I  miss  my  prophecy, 
if  those  little  yellow  devils  do  not  make  us  a  siege 
of  Port  Arthur  that  will  come  near  to  Sebastopol's 
siege.' 

"  'Pouf !  your  Excellency.  We  shall  wait  until 
winter  before  starting  the  campaign.  Then 
we  can  impose  our  will  on  the  Japanese,  and  they 
can  never  come  here.  The  north  wind  will  fight 
for  us.'  And  Kuropatkin  sneered,  looked  at  the 
Vice-Admiral,  and  walked  down  to  the  road. 
'Quelles  betises!  Betes!  Imbeciles!'  I  heard  him 
say. 

"And  now!  What  have  we?  The  Viceroy  and 
the  commander  at  daggers'  drawn,  and  each  gen- 
eral the  fighting  foe  of  the  other;  each  willing  to 
see  the  enemy  triumph  rather  than  his  rival  score 
a  success.  The  Viceroy  and  the  commander 
wisely  keep  their  headquarters  on  railway  trains — 
yes,  actually,  with  steam  up  all  the  time.  Even  a 
locomotive  at  both  ends  of  his  train,  and  balloons 
fastened  to  the  car  roofs  by  this  time,  as  the 
Japanese  cartoons  show.  They  both  keep  ad- 


THE  LIAOYANG  MEN  129 

vancing  to  the  north,  pressing  on  Harbin,  just 
ahead  of  the  Japanese.  It  is  retreat,  retreat,  re- 
treat; sending  the  colours,  and  the  artillery,  and 
the  supplies  on  to  the  north,  and  then  racing  after 
them.  Sauve  qui  pent.  'Give  me  time,'  says  the 
commander,  and  they  give  it  to  him.  'Soon  we 
shall  be  winning  great  victories,'  said  the  brag- 
garts in  Liaoyang  cafes  in  May;  and  now,  it  is 
September.  The  imperial  navy  has  sunk  more  of 
its  own  than  of  the  enemy's  ships.  And  the  im- 
perial army  !  Not  a  victory  yet !" 

With  all  that  I  myself  helped  to  send  out  from 
Russia,  I  am  distressed  by  the  stories  of  hospital 
mismanagement.  Liaoyang  hospitals  were  unpre- 
pared for  the  wounded  that  came  to  them  from 
Haicheng.  There  were  no  lamps,  no  candles,  no  ice. 
The  Red  Cross  sister  herself  went  into  the  city 
and  bought  lemons,  and  found  the  Red  Cross 
stamps  on  the  boxes — a  gift  sent  out  from  Odessa ! 

With  thirty  Grand  Dukes,  the  only  member  of 
the  Imperial  family  at  the  front  is  Boris!  Boris 
Vladimirovitch !  Boris  !  with  a  vaudeville  company 
of  blondes  to  see  the  fun  and  the  excitement  of  a 
campaign,  to  watch  a  battue  of  men  instead  of  a 
battue  of  partridges ! 


CHAPTER  XIV 
THE  SHAHO  MEN 

Wednesday,  October  12th. 

ANOTHER  battle  is  on,  and  we  do  not  dare 
•*  •*•  to  hope.  The  last  prisoners  brought  in — 
picked  up  while  reconnoitring  near  the  coal  mines 
at  Liaoyang — have  told  us  more  of  the  terrible 
losses  at  Liaoyang,  of  the  mad  panic  of  flight,  and 
the  latest  quarrels  of  the  generals.  Each  general 
accuses  the  other  of  disobeying  orders,  of  delay- 
ing reinforcements,  of  deliberately  abandoning 
posts  to  ruin  another's  plans;  and  each  vows 
vengeance.  All  have  appealed  to  Petersburg,  and 
Petersburg  bestows — not  ribbons  and  crosses  and 
orders — but  blows  and  curses.  Poor  Nicholas 
weeps,  they  say,  and  is  so  melancholy  and  de- 
pressed, that  only  the  little  Czarevitch  can  make 
him  smile.  It  is  a  dull,  unhappy  court.  "Cannot 
my  generals  even  win  one  battle?"  cries  poor 
Nicholas  in  despair. 

After  Makaroff's  death,  Vladimir  was  called 
over  to  Peking  at  Paul's  request,  to  inform  him 
about  the  situation.  They  had  their  days  un- 
broken and  lived  over  again  their  time  in  the 

130 


THE  SHAHO  MEN  131 

deserts  and  the  Pamirs.  Both  felt  that  it  was  a 
farewell  visit.  "I  shall  die  of  chagrin  and  humilia- 
tion," Paul  wrote  in  May,  after  Zassalitch's  dis- 
graceful failure  on  the  Yalu  River.  "This  war  of 
Alexeieff's  has  nearly  killed  me.  I  have  not  'long 
to  live,'  "  were  his  farewell  words  to  Vladimir  in 
Peking.  We  too  well  know  that  each  battle  is 
another  deathblow,  each  defeat  brings  death 
nearer  to  "Iron  Wrist,"  as  they  called  him  in  the 
Khanates.  "How  I  wanted  to  see  Vassili  Verest- 
chagin !"  Paul  said.  "I  wanted  him  to  come  here 
and  paint  these  Manchus  and  their  palaces. 
There  is  nothing  so  gorgeous  in  the  rest  of  the 
world.  The  old  Empress,  a  tigress  enthroned,  is 
the  greatest  sovereign  of  twenty  centuries.  Eu- 
rope has  no  match  for  her.  If  she  were  a  man, 
I  could  make  her  out.  I  can  only  threaten  and 
frighten,  and  they  tell  me  she  does  fear  me.  If  it 
were  not  for  the  foreign  women  who  have  her  ear, 
I  could  do  more.  I  could  do  more." 

Poor  Paul!  How  earnestly  he  wished  America 
had  never  been  discovered;  his  American  confrere 
in  Peking  continually  undid  him.  The  Americans 
were  of  course  hand  in  glove  with  the  Japanese, 
and  their  ladies  had  an  entree  at  the  palace  that 
our  Russian  women  could  not  obtain.  Poor  Paul ! 
Poor  Paul !  Although  prostrate  and  handicapped, 
without  social  aids,  he  is  a  match  for  the  whole 
corps  diplomatique — and  Vladimir  had  the  hint 


132          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

from  him  that  the  Chinese  would  soon  be  brought 
into  the  melee,  and  then  it  would  become  an  inter- 
national affair,  and  Japan  would  be  put  in  her 
place  by  a  coalition  of  continental  powers. 


Sunday,  October  16th. 

The  most  glorious  weather  has  come  to  us  with 
the  rice  harvest;  and  the  clear  dry  sunshine,  the 
fields  of  yellow  stubble,  and  the  vivid  patches  of 
red  lilies  have  made  me  think  again  and  again  of 
Italy.  I  am  homesick  for  the  villa  on  the  Roman 
hillside.  If  I  could  only  some  morning  step  out 
on  the  terrace  and  turn  the  telescope  on  the  Forum, 
and  see  how  Boni's  new  excavations  were  going  on  ! 
or  look  over  on  the  Pincian,  or  to  the  Medici  terrace 
and  see  who  was  taking  a  morning  ride,  that  would 
be  joy!  When  I  remember  that  splendid  Roman 
outlook  of  ours—out  over  the  great  city  valley 
from  the  heights  —  I  feel  smothered  and  oppressed 
living  and  moving  about  on  the  flat,  flat  level  of  a 
rice  plain. 

The  Japanese  are  making  more  temples  ready, 
and  have  begun  building  a  great  barracks  of 
officers'  quarters  to  make  room  for  all  the  new 
prisoners  that  are  coming,  and  to  prepare  for  the 
fall  of  Port  Arthur  !  They  speak  of  it  as  if  it  were 
as  certain  an  event  in  the  near  future  as  Christmas 
Day  ;  but  all  who  come  to  us  as  prisoners  tell  that 


THE  SHAHO  MEN  133 

the  fortress  is  stronger  than  any  one  in  Europe 
imagines.  It  has  food  for  two  years  and  a  half, 
and  ammunition  for  two  years.  The  storehouses 
are  overflowing,  supplies  stand  in  miles  of  goods 
trains  on  sidings  there,  and  are  heaped  in  moun- 
tains on  shore.  The  building  of  fortifications  has 
gone  on  night  and  day,  and  the  commander  can- 
not complain  of  forts  on  paper  any  more.  The 
forts  are  almost  touching  on  the  hills  surrounding 
the  city,  and  an  army  can  no  more  force  an 
entrance  between  the  forts,  than  a  fleet  can  get  in 
between  the  forts  and  mines  of  the  harbour.  The 
Japanese  tried  to  take  by  assault  all  summer;  but 
now  they  are  discouraged,  and  only  keep  up  the 
appearance  of  attacks,  and  "save  face,"  while  the 
real  fighting  is  further  north — with  our  "General 
Ruckwarts!" 

Women  and  children  are  still  living  at  Port 
Arthur  in  safety.  A  shell  hits  the  town  now  and 
then,  but  so  far  there  is  no  panic.  When  the 
coldest  weather  comes,  the  Japanese  will  have  to 
retire  to  warm  barracks  somewhere,  and  their  fleet 
will  run  for  the  milder  weather  of  Nagasaki. 
They,  of  course,  cannot  stand  our  Siberian  win- 
ters ;  and  Port  Arthur  can  then*  lay  in  more 
provisions  and  send  away  the  sick  and  the  women 
and  children.  Port  Arthur's  assured  safety  is  our 
great  comfort  in  these  days,  our  one  cheerful  sub- 
ject of  talk.  That  and  the  little  Czarevitch. 


134          'AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

Sunday,  October  23rd. 

The  ten  days'  battle  of  the  Shaho  has  ended. 
Kuropatkin  has  retreated,  of  course,  and  all  my 
sick  ones  are  worse.  One  or  two  are  really  becom- 
ing affected  in  mind.  Our  Slav  temperament  is 
prone  to  melancholy  and  dementia,  and  men  like 
Grievsky,  who  are  either  at  the  height  of  joy  or 
in  deep  despondency,  do  not  bear  up  well  under 
long-continued  sorrow.  Bismarck  knew  us  when 
he  said  the  Russians  were  feminine  in  character, 
too  volatile,  sentimental,  and  emotional.  We  are 
not  the  race  for  cold  reason  and  pure  logic. 
Grievsky  and  the  others  here  argue,  argue,  argue 
by  the  hour,  enthusiastically,  excitedly,  and  then 
with  frenzy,  each  in  the  support  of  his  own 
opinions,  blind  and  deaf  to  another's  opinions, 
facts,  or  reasoning.  Abstract  discussions  occupy 
their  time,  and  from  the  frothings  of  these 
cleverest  men,  one  gets  an  idea  of  what  a  Russian 
parliament  would  be  like,  if  a  benevolent  Czar  ever 
carried  out  the  Liberator's  intention.  It  took  the 
Japanese  a  dozen  years  to  learn  the  ways  of  con- 
stitutional government,  and  to  arrive  at  a  toler- 
able imitation  of  British  parliamentary  ways.  We 
Russians  are  a*  different  people;  slower  to  assimi- 
larte  ways  so  foreign  to  all  the  genius  of  our  race. 
No,  the  parliament,  the  deliberative  assemblage,  is 
not  for  us.  An  exciting  debate  would  send  all  our 
parliamentary  leaders  into  hysterics  and  dementia ; 


THE  SHAHO  MEN  135 

a  division  would  mean  duels,  assassinations,  civil 
war  —  even  barricades  and  street  fighting. 


Tuesday,  October  25th. 

With  the  arrival  of  the  wounded  from  Liao- 
yang,  I  took  regular  all-day  work  at  the  hospital, 
for  a  fortnight  ;  going  at  eight  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  donning  my  nurse's  cap  and  costume, 
and  assisting  and  interpreting  in  the  operating 
room  or  in  the  wards,  as  needed.  I  always  had 
my  fixed  hours  with  Vladimir,  and  often  I  was  so 
weary  that  I  dropped  off  into  little  naps  while  I 
waited  for  our  afternoon  cup  of  tea.  With  such 
grand  rounds  of  the  barracks  establishment,  I 
always  came  to  Vladimir  full  of  the  day's  news, 
news  from  the  Russian  camps  and  Petersburg. 

A  Buriat  Mongol  was  operated  on  to-day  — 
a  gunshot  wound  and  some  sword  cuts  on  the  right 
arm.  The  bone  had  been  splintered  and  taken  out 
and  a  metal  substitute  inserted.  It  is  wonderful 
what  these  Japanese  surgeons  can  do;  and  I  am 
not  yet  used  to  the  interest  they  show  in  the  suffer- 
ing Russians.  "Do  good  to  them  that  hate  you" 
has  its  illustration  here,  for  the  surgeon-in-chief 
labored  over  this  Cossack  of  the  ranks,  as  if  he 
were  a  Japanese  officer  of  the  highest  class.  I  fed 
some  buckwheat  gruel  —  the  Japanese  know  it  and 
make  it  well  —  to  the  poor  fellow,  after  he  was 


136         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

brought  out  to  the  air,  and  he  told  me  his  regi- 
ment, and  that  he  had  been  servant  to  an  officer, 
who  came  out  from  Petersburg  to  command  his 
troop.  The  officer  was  Lyov  Siemenoff,  our  young 
guardsman,  military  attache  of  the  embassy  in 
Rome,  my  special  pride  and  pet  for  three  winters. 
He  was  such  a  splendidly  handsome  chap,  so 
typically  Russian,  yet  so  free  from  the  vices  of 
his  fellow  guardsmen.  He  was  daft  on  archae- 
ology and  coins;  and  he  and  Vladimir  had 
rapturous  times  together  hanging  upon  Boni's 
words  and  workmen ;  and  never  missing  a  Sunday 
evening  at  St.  Catharina,  with  Donna  Emilia  and 
her  archaeologists. 

Somewhere,  in  that  awful  millet  field  by  the 
Shaho,  Siemenoff  was  cut  off  from  the  rest  of  his 
troopers,  and  came  out  from  the  tall  millet  into 
the  arms  of  the  Japanese.  He  was  wounded,  and 
fell  forward,  his  horse  was  shot  and  came  down 
with  him.  "Barina,"  the  Cossack  said,  "those  little 
Japanese  devils  were  thick  like  midges — everywhere 
— everywhere — in  the  air,  and  they  cut  me  down. 
When  I  knew  myself  again,  it  was  dark;  they  had 
me  stretched  on  a  table  and  were  cutting  and 
trimming  around  my  leg,  and  then  I  slept  some 
more  and  woke  up  in  a  railway  train.  I  never  saw 
my  master  again.  I  suppose  they  left  him  dead 
there  where  he  fell.  Dead !  dead !  But  when  I  am 
out  again,  I  shall  go  and  search  for  him  and  bury 


THE  SHAHO  MEN  137 

him.  I  shall  know  the  place.  I  could  easily  find  it, 
even  if  the  crops  were  all  cut." 

Lyov  was  the  sort  that  Russia  needs,  and  can 
so  poorly  spare.  There  are  so  few  like  him. 
Vladimir  had  known  his  family.  The  mother  was 
a  great  beauty.  The  father  went  out  on  active 
service  with  Skobeleff  under  General  Kauffmann; 
and  then  afterwards  went  to  the  Balkans  with 
Gourko,  and  was  killed  at  Gorui-Durbrik.  When 
Lyov  was  in  Rome,  we  always  had  the  fiction  of 
hunting  a  nice  English  "Meess"  for  him;  and 
many  a  bouquet  of  young  beauties  have  I  gathered 
at  my  table  and  for  little  dances,  under  the  plea 
of  marrying  Lyov  off  well. 

"You  see,"  he  said,  "the  one  path  to  success 
nowadays  is  to  have  an  English  or  an  American 
wife.  The  English  I  know  a  little  more  about; 
but  America  is  too  far  off,  and  we  hear  such 
strange  stories.  So,  I  think,  if  it  is  the  same  to 
you,  Sophia  Ivanovna,  I  will  forego  the  American 
beauty  and  her  greater  chicness,  and  continue  to 
seek  out  my  adorable  'Meess.'  '  Then,  of  course, 
he  fell  madly,  frantically,  Slavically  in  love  with 
an  American  who  would  not  love  him,  and  next 
with  an  English  girl  from  Canada,  which  is 
America.  A  goddess  of  beauty  she  was,  with  a 
manner  and  style  not  one  of  our  Grand  Duchesses 
could  equal.  She  ordered  men  about,  and  they 
obeyed,  not  meekly,  but  eagerly,  frantically. 


138         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

Even  Englishmen  fetched  and  carried,  and  waited 
on  her.  "I  think  she  hypnotises  me,"  one  heavy 
Briton  said.  "I  shall  not  be  surprised  any  time 
to  find  myself  tying  her  adorable  shoe  laces,  black- 
ing her  smart  little  boots,  even."  The  divine 
mademoiselle,  "la  belle  Canadienne,"  for  a  time 
seemed  to  listen  to  Lyov ;  and  then,  all  of  a  sudden 
Lyov  was  plunged  in  melancholy,  left  Rome,  and 
went  back  to  the  Garde  a  Cheval.  We  were  soon 
startled  with  the  announcement  of  her  marriage  in 
London,  to  Count  Foresta,  an  Italian,  who  was 
all  well  enough  perhaps  as  a  parti — a  good  title 
and  estates,  mediaeval  castle,  and  all  that — but  a 
poor  second,  as  man  for  man,  to  Lyov  Siemenoff . 
And  now,  Lyov  is  dead !  Killed  in  battle,  like  his 
father  before  him.  The  Forestas  were  living  on 
one  of  their  estates  near  Siena,  awaiting  an  heir, 
when  the  Conte  came  down  to  Rome  for  the 
cavalry  rides,  and,  in  doing  some  of  those  mad 
Italian  rides  down  steep  banks,  was  killed. 


CHAPTER  XV 

IN  KAKI  TIME 

Thursday,  October  27th. 

ALL  the  kaki  trees  are  hung  now  with  their 
•**•  gorgeous,  golden  fruits,  and  they  add  the 
last  touch  to  the  mellowing  landscape  of  ripe 
autumn.  While  nature  sings  this  rich  melody,  and 
all  the  earth  looks  peace,  our  wounded  continue  to 
arrive  in  heart-breaking  numbers.  We  continue 
to  hear  news  from  our  own  people,  news  direct 
from  headquarters,  and  also  the  last  news  that  had 
come  out  to  Manchuria  from  Petersburg. 

Vladimir  shows  a  real  improvement  now  that 
there  is  an  end  to  the  suffocating  heat  and  damp- 
ness. He  sits  up  a  few  hours  each  day,  one  arm 
free  from  plaster  casings  and  resting  on  a  pillow. 
Poor,  feeble,  shrivelled,  dead-looking  arm  that  it 
is,  with  the  puckered  scars,  and  stretches  of 
hideous,  thin  skin  that  has  so  newly  formed  and 
healed.  The  other  arm  is  in  plaster  for  another 
week,  the  knee  is  rigid,  immovable;  but  I  am  now 
such  a  skilful  masseuse  that  a  Stockholm  institute 
would  give  me  a  degree.  I  rub  and  rub,  and  work 
the  poor  paralysed  muscles  and  broken  nerves  by 
the  hour,  and  now  I  regularly  attend  on  Vladimir 
139 


140         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

as  professional  masseuse,  after  the  surgeon  sees 
him  in  the  morning,  and  again  for  a  last  hour, 
before  I  leave  in  the  afternoon.  In  this  way,  my 
whole  day  goes  by,  passed  in  the  barracks ;  and  I 
have  no  need  for  lessons  or  any  devices  for  passing 
the  time.  I  have  little  time  for  my  garden,  or 
hardly  for  curio  buying  any  more.  I  see  Madame 
Takasu  and  the  American  sister  of  charity  only 
when  they  are  on  duty  in  their  week's  turns  at  the 
hospital,  bandaging,  feeding,  changing,  and  bath- 
ing the  patients,  and  tidying  the  wards.  It  is 
always  a  wonder  to  me  how  these  two  quiet,  delicate 
women,  with  no  previous  training  or  experience, 
can  rise  to  the  emergency  of  these  war  times,  and 
stand  up  under  this  heavy  hospital  work.  But 
then,  I  never  could  have  supposed  that  I  myself 
could  endure  such  things,  could  even  look  upon 
such  raw  and  gaping  wounds  as  I  have  washed, 
and  helped  to  dress  and  bandage.  Here,  I  wash  a 
mujik's  face,  as  naturally,  without  thought  of  the 
strangeness  of  the  proceeding,  as  if  it  were  the 
face  of  one  of  my  little  nephews.  Yesterday,  it 
was  a  poor  Siberian  Cossack,  with  a  face  and  a 
shock  of  hair  like  any  wild  animal,  whom  I  made 
ready  for  the  surgeon.  A  piece  of  shell  had  struck 
his  back;  had  gouged  a  hole  as  large  and  deep  as 
a  wash-basin,  down  to  the  very  bone,  and  his 
sufferings  were  acute.  He  moaned  and  looked  at 
me,  with  the  piteous  eyes  of  a  dumb  beast. 


IN  KAKI  TIME  141 

Human  life  seems  so  cheap,  when  one  considers  the 
thousands  who  lay  dead  on  the  Liaoyang  plain, 
and  the  tens  of  thousands  who  marched  away, 
that  one  wonders  if  it  is  worth  while,  if  it  is  merci- 
ful, to  rescue  such  a  wrecked  and  battered  piece  of 
humanity,  who  never  can  be  useful,  strong,  or 
sound  again.  And  then  I  think  of  Vladimir  and 
of  the  man  he  calls  the  "Grand  Prix,"  the  hospital 
patient  who  is  beyond  all  rivalry  in  the  number  of 
his  personal  casualties — that  sailor  from  the 
Varyag,  who  had  one  hundred  and  forty-two 
wounds  in  his  body!  That  many  splinters  and 
bits  of  shell,  some  as  fine  as  bird  shot,  had  been 
driven  into  him.  They  picked  the  pieces  out  one 
by  one,  cured  him,  and  sent  him  off. 

With  these  disasters  in  Manchuria  it  is  now 
plain  that  we  shall  spend  the  winter  here.  I  shall 
see  my  camellia  hedge  in  bloom  after  all.  I  have 
lived  on  from  day  to  day  in  such  absorption  in  the 
one  thing — Vladimir's  progress — that  I  have  for- 
gotten all  outside  affairs.  I  had  talked  vaguely  of 
going  to  Kobe  for  stores,  for  necessaries  for  my- 
self and  Vladimir,  but  finally  felt  I  could  not  leave 
him  for  even  three  days.  Anna  went  with  the  re- 
turning French  Consul,  bought  everything,  and 
returned  in  the  charge  of  one  of  the  professional 
guides,  with  such  a  mountain  of  boxes  that  we 
were  put  to  it  for  a  place  to  stow  them  at  first. 
Every  one  wanted  shopping  done  in  Kobe,  and 


AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

Anna  had  shirts,  pajamas,  overcoats,  dressing 
gowns,  smoking  jackets,  and  such  things  made  to 
the  trunk  full.  Vladimir  is  cheered,  I  am  sure,  by 
his  quilted  gown,  and  his  fur  slippers,  and  new 
bamboo  lounging  chair,  and  he  wears  now  the  look 
of  respectable  invalidism.  I  affect  to  shake  him 
that  he  does  not  hurry  faster  to  get  well,  that  I 
may  have  him  under  my  own  roof  for  the 
Christmas. 

And  that  roof !  Alack  and  alas !  What  a  time 
I  have  had  with  it !  Anna  brought  down  stoves 
from  Kobe;  iron  ones  made  in  America,  and  the 
imitation  of  them  made  in  Tokyo,  and  also  stove- 
pipes for  all.  I  thought  I  had  only  to  employ  the 
workmen  and  show  them  where  to  put  them.  But, 
ah  me!  there  was  the  landlord  to  reckon  with!  I 
had  said  nothing  about  putting  up  foreign  stoves 
when  I  leased  the  house  in  July!  Bon  Dieu! 
who  could  think  of  stoves  then!  The  landlord 
was  sure  it  would  set  his  house  afire  to  put  stoves 
in,  and  that  it  would  dry  and  shrink  the  exquisite 
woodwork,  until  there  would  be  cracks  and 
draughts  everywhere.  For  my  own  comfort,  he 
begged  me  not  to  use  foreign  stoves.  Finally, 
through  the  help  of  the  Protestant  missionaries, 
who  had  stoves  and  yet  never  burned  the  houses 
down,  I  won  over  the  old  obstructionist — at  an  in- 
creased rental,  of  course,  to  cover  fire  risks. 

Two  of  the  suspected  sick  officers  are  now  very 


IN  KAKI  TIME  143 

plainly  on  the  verge  of  insanity,  if  not  wholly  in 
that  condition.  One  lies  on  his  cot  with  the  blanket 
drawn  over  his  face,  and  refuses  to  speak  or  eat. 
I  have  been  called  twice  to  help  coax  and  humour 
him  into  taking  his  food,  and  after  a  childlike 
acquiescence,  he  covers  his  face  again,  and  lies 
silent  by  the  hour.  At  night,  he  mutters  under 
his  blanket,  or  parades  the  ward,  lifting  the  cur- 
tains and  walking  into  each  room  to  count  the 
people  there.  Vladimir  has  had  two  terrible  shocks 
by  waking  in  the  darkness  to  feel  a  presence  in  the 
room,  and  to  know  by  whispered  mutterings  that 
it  was  the  lunatic  at  large  in  the  night.  We  spoke 
to  one  of  the  young  doctors  about  it,  but  he  only 
giggled,  thought  it  was  funny,  and  said  he  would 
ask  the  chief-surgeon  to  have  these  dangerous  men 
isolated,  or  at  least  locked  up  at  night.  The  other 
man  has  the  uneasy  excitement  and  the  glittering 
eyes  of  one  who  might  become  dangerous  at  any 
moment ;  and  I  am  thoroughly  unhappy  at  having 
Vladimir,  weak  as  he  is,  in  such  surroundings.  It 
does  not  promise  a  nerve  cure,  and  fate  could  not 
have  done  anything  worse  than  to  send  those  two 
unguarded  lunatics  into  his  ward !  Ah !  if  I  could 
only  take  him  to  my  little  house !  If  I  could  only 
take  him  away,  away,  far  from  Japan — over  to 
America — anywhere — where  I  could  keep  him 
away  from  this  atmosphere  of  war — these  sights 
and  perpetual  reminders  of  battles  and,  worse  yet, 


144         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

of  defeats  !  Why  not  release  this  poor  battered 
wreck  of  a  man  now,  as  much  as  the  seventy  aged 
and  crippled  Russians  they  turned  over  to  the 
French  Consul  a  few  weeks  ago?  He  can  never 
fight  or  harm  them  again.  He  is  a  non-combatant 
hereafter. 


Sunday,  October  30th. 

To-day  it  is  admitted  that  the  Japanese  have 
again  captured  the  mountain  that  looks  down  upon 
Port  Arthur.  The  slaughter  has  been  awful; 
worse,  Loris  says,  than  when  it  was  captured  and 
recaptured  by  the  two  forces  in  September  —  when 
one  side  of  the  hill  was  blue  with  the  bodies  of 
dead  Russians,  the  other  side  brown  with  the  dead 
Japanese.  They  seem  to  love  to  talk  of  these 
things  of  horror  there  in  the  hospital;  to  dilate 
on  trenches  heaped  with  dead,  and  fields  soaked 
with  blood;  and  Vladimir  is  fed  on  horrors  every 
hour  that  I  am  not  with  him. 

Why  will  they  not  let  me  take  him  out  to  my 
house?  We  will  not  run  away.  The  police  may 
watch  us.  We  could  not  possibly  get  off  this  island 
of  Shikoku,  if  both  were  agile  and  active.  Their 
caution  is  absurd.  If  it  were  not  for  Vladimir  im- 
ploring, and  the  Consul's  advising  me  not  to  do 
anything  just  yet,  I  should  talk  seriously  with  the 
chief-surgeon  and  see,  if  by  appeal  to  Tokyo  and  a 


IN  KAKI  TIME  145 

little  Legation  help,  we  could  not  get  something 
granted  in  such  an  exceptional  case.  It  is  so  hard 
to  wait  and  wait,  and  see  Vladimir  grow  worse,  or 
arrested  in  his  recovery.  He  will  never  be  able  to 
leave  the  barracks,  if  he  is  to  be  kept  there  in  a 
ward  of  restless,  nervous  men  forever  arguing  and 
talking  and  harping  on  their  woes. 

On  these  perfect  autumn  days  it  means  much 
for  the  officers  in  town  to  forego  their  long  walk 
and  come  here  to  the  hospital  to  see  the  sick  on 
the  two  days  of  the  week  when  general  visitors  are 
allowed.  These  are  sad  travesties  of  our  "at 
home"  days  at  Petersburg,  for  in  their  Red  Cross 
gowns  and  makeshift  uniforms,  the  ward  has 
rather  the  look  of  a  fancy  dress  ball,  but  it  is  a 
comfort  for  us  of  common  woes  to  sit  around  a 
samovar  and  maintain  some  semblance  of  our 
social  traditions. 

I  must  say  that  this  year's  experience  has  Rus- 
sified me  beyond  all  measure,  and  intensified  my 
patriotism,  my  loyalty,  and  all  my  race  instincts 
on  the  Muscovite  side.  As  with  all  whom  I  know 
of  mixed  parentage,  my  Russian  traits,  Russian 
leanings  are  strongest.  The  Russian  blood  dom- 
inates. No  war  of  England's,  not  that  unhappy 
Boer  war,  has  touched  more  than  the  edge  of  my 
nature ;  while  this  war,  from  the  first  shot  at  Port 
Arthur,  has  fired  and  roused  to  life  everything  in 
me.  It  was  instinct  for  both  Vladimir  and  me  to 


146         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

instantly  rush  to  Petersburg  when  Russia  was 
attacked — Vladimir  to  volunteer,  to  push  for,  to 
insist  upon  active  service,  and  I  to  see  what  I 
could  do  for  the  cause,  for  the  wounded,  for  the 
soldiers'  families. 

In  Petersburg,  they  continually  taunted  me 
with  being  English  in  my  sympathies,  with  being 
pro- Japanese ;  and  there  were  many,  many  un- 
pleasant incidents.  Here,  when  Vladimir  and  I 
argue  for  moderation,  for  patience  on  the  part  of 
the  reckless  officers  who  want  to  quarrel  with  their 
guards  and  interpreters,  and  threaten  to  escape; 
when  we  try  to  explain  things  or  put  them  in 
another  light,  to  prove  to  them  how  really  kind 
and  considerate  the  Japanese  are  to  us,  how  gen- 
erous are  the  intentions  of  the  regulations  that 
petty  officials  distort  by  their  cramped  mental 
vision — then  these  brother  horios  upbraid  us. 
"You  take  the  side  of  the  enemy,  Sophia  Ivan- 
ovna.  But  you  and  Vladimir  are  not  true  Russians 
— you  are  foreigners.  You  have  lived  all  your 
lives  outside  Russia.  Your  country  is  the  Riviera, 
or  England — you  are  subjects  of  Albert  of 
Monaco,  or  Edward  VII.  No,  not  quite  that. 
Vladimir  has  served  his  country  well,  and  you — 
yes,  you  too.  Ah,  I  take  it  back.  I  prostrate 
myself  in  penitence,  and  we  all  know  that  you, 
Sophia  Ivanovna,  have  saved  us  from  many  follies 
and  disasters  here." 


IN  KAKI  TIME  147 

Grievsky  is  now  in  high  spirits  and  thinks  he 
reads  in  all  the  Japanese  faces  a  depression  at 
their  failure  to  reduce  Port  Arthur  —  a  realisation 
of  the  impossibility  of  that  attempt. 

"Viterbo  and  Kondrachenko  !  Those  are  our 
only  generals  now.  They  have  planned,  they  have 
made  the  fortifications  at  Port  Arthur.  They  have 
made  it  the  strongest  fortress  in  the  world.  I  was 
Kondrachenko's  senior.  Now  he  outranks  me  — 
he  must  be  a  general  now.  Every  month  in  that 
siege  counts  for  a  year's  service,  and  soon  even 
my  own  nephew  will  outrank  me!  Ach  Gott! 
What  fighting  is  there  there,  now  !  And  I,  no 
part  !  I  am  fast  aging  towards  my  retiring  pension 
here.  In  prison  !  Here  !  Here  !  On  a  little  island 
in  Japan  !  Japan  !  Japan  !  What  was  it  ever  to 
me?  Have  I  ever  wished  for  it?  Even  to  see  it? 
What  craziness  this  whole  Manchurian  adventure  ! 
De  Witte  and  his  cursed  railroads  !  Alexeieff  and 
his  cursed  empire  of  the  Far  East  !  Bezobrazoff 
and  his  cursed  intrigues  and  Korean  forests  !  For 
them,  for  their  schemes,  I  am  here,  here,  here!" 
And  down  comes  that  terrible  hand. 


Monday,  October  31st. 

Esper  Petroff  appeared  yesterday,  and  in  a 
dazed  way  greeted  us  all.  "I  came  to  see  you,  to 
find  you  and  Vladimir,  but  I  cannot  believe  yet 


148         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS- 

that  it  is  really  you.  It  is  too  strange.  I  have 
been  dazed.  I  have  doubted  half  my  senses  ever 
since  I  started  for  Manchuria.  I  continually 
wonder  if  I  am  awake.  It  has  been  such  a  proces- 
sion of  undreamed  of  and  impossible  things,  ever 
since  I  began  my  'military  promenade'  across  Asia. 
I  waved  my  hand  and  said,  'To  Japan !'  when  I 
left.  And  it  was  true — I  came — to  Japan  direct 
— by  express.  I  only  stopped  long  enough  to 
report  at  headquarters,  and  be  assigned  to  Orloff's 
command.  And  then,  I  walked  straight  to  the 
arms  of  the  Japanese. 

"I  saw  Anna  Pashkoff,  as  I  came  through.  She 
is  doing  great  work,  good  work,  taking  the  sick 
as  they  come  from  Harbin,  and  she  is  enlarging 
her  kitchen  and  hospital  all  the  time.  No  one  else 
can  get  lumber,  workmen,  supplies — but  she  does. 
She  rages,  storms,  commands;  she  scolds  the 
generals,  and  swears  at  the  colonels,  telegraphs  to 
Alexeieff,  to  Petersburg,  and  to  Tsarskoe  Selo,  if 
she  doesn't  get  what  she  wants.  She  is  the  Vice- 
roy, the  Autocrat  of  Trans-Baikalia. — Magnifi- 
cent! She  went  down  on  the  train  with  us  to 
Mukden  to  get  some  general  orders  issued  by  the 
commander. 

"Mukden  is  a  strange  headquarters.  All  this 
war  is  strange,  anyhow.  It  is  not  like  the  Balkan 
campaign.  There  is  no  imperial  camp  at  Mukden, 
with  the  sovereign  driving  to  the  field  every  day, 


IN  KAKI  TIME  149 

and  lunching  in  sight  of  the  operations.  Ah! 
those  were  days  at  Plevna !  We  have  no  Skobeleff 
now,  either.  There  are  none  like  him  now — only 
such  generals  as  he  fought  against  in  Ferghana — 
the  thieves  and  speculators  of  the  supply  depart- 
ment. Skobeleff  fought  that  crowd  to  the  finish 
in  Ferghana,  and  they  fought  and  finished  him 
afterwards  in  Russia.  They  are  ruling  again 
now,  with  no  Skobeleff  to  oppose  them. 

"They  saw  to  it  that  he  never  got  a  promotion, 
a  command,  nor  a  chance  again  for  years.  It  was 
only  chance,  an  accident,  that  put  him  in  the  front 
line  at  Plevna.  After  that  affair,  Alexander 
Nicholaivitch  saw  that  the  clique  of  army  thieves 
did  not  run  Skobeleff  to  the  rear.  These  Japanese 
generals  are  something  like  Skobeleff.  Their  army 
is  all  a  'Sixteenth  Division.'  Oh !  don't  speak  of  it. 

"Now,  Skobeleff  in  a  new  white  uniform  on  his 
white  horse  was  a  picture  for  any  soldier  to 
worship  and  go  wild  over.  He  fired  the  imagina- 
tion. He  appeared  from  the  smoke  of  a  battery, 
all  shining  white,  like  an  apparition,  like  a  vision 
of  St.  George  or  St.  Alexander  Nevsky.  Now, 
there  is  no  powder  smoke.  No  Skobeleff.  No 
heroic  figures  such  as  there  used  to  be.  The  gen- 
erals do  not  have  al  fresco  luncheons  with  their 
staff  on  the  hillside,  and  do  not  watch  the  attack 
with  field  glasses,  as  if  they  were  at  the  opera. 
Oh,  no!  They  hide  in  bomb-proofs  and  galleries, 


150         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

and  listen  to  telephones  to  know  what  is  going  on. 
The  romance,  the  picturesqueness,  all  the  theatri- 
cal pageantry  of  war  is  gone.  It  ended  in  '78. 
Skobeleff  was  the  last  general  worth  putting  in  a 
picture.  We  have  a  fat  admiral  holding  a  tele- 
phone receiver,  to  personify  the  'Soul  of  War'  and 
the  'Spirit  of  Battle'  now.  Ugh ! 

"This  war  ends  everything  that  could  bewitch 
the  imagination.  It  is  all  mathematics  and 
mechanics  now;  plain  killing,  slaughter  by  equa- 
tion and  cube  roots,  by  high  angle  and  logarithms. 
Nevermore  will  our  troops  march  to  battle  in 
parade  position,  with  bands  playing,  the  priest 
leading,  carrying  the  crucifix  to  bring  blessings  on 
our  cause.  The  last  of  that  was  with  Zassalitch 
on  the  Yalu.  No,  no!  Without  Zassalitch.  He 
was  in  a  cart  driving  frantically  away  from  the 
Yalu.  He  is  a  specimen  of  our  generals. 

"Now,  I  suppose,  we  will  have  to  turn  to  and 
study,  and  work  and  drill,  and  pass  examinations 
like  those  cursed  Germans.  The  Germans !  The 
Germans !  They  are  at  the  bottom  of  all  our 
troubles  in  this  war;  even  if  they  did  not  en- 
courage the  Japanese,  like  the  English;  nor  put 
up  the  money  for  it,  like  the  Americans.  I  always 
expected  us  to  go  to  war  with  Germany  next.  No 
one  ever  thought  of  Japan.  Skobeleff  always  said 
there  would  be  a  war  with  Germany,  greater 
than  our  Turkish  war,  or  the  Franco-Prussian. 


IN  KAKI  TIME  151 

He  said  war  was  inevitable  between  the  Slav  and 
the  Teuton.  One  or  the  other,  Pan-Slavism  or 
Pan-Teutonism,  would  rule  the  continent.  And 
German  officers  have  been  boasting  all  these  years 
that  they  had  conquered  Austria  and  France,  and 
that  Russia  would  come  next.  Bah !  Pan-Slavism 
dragged  us  into  the  Turkish  war,  and  what  did 
we  gain?  Some  promotions — yes;  but  death,  crip- 
ples, taxes;  and  then  England  cheated  us  out  of 
Constantinople.  Yes,  and  Bismarck  helped  her 
do  it;  and  now,  the  Kaiser  continually  gets  the 
ear  of  Nicholas,  and  what  happens?  No  good,  I 
can  tell  you.  William  of  Hohenzollern  hates  us, 
as  he  hates  the  French.  Only  he  is  afraid  of  us. 
No,  I  don't  know  that  he  is,  since  our  army  and 
our  navy  are  both  the  laughing-stock  of  all  the 
world.  It  is  that  French  alliance  that  the  Kaiser 
hates  so.  That  alliance  has  been  our  greatest 
calamity." 

"Oh,  no !"  I  burst  in  on  this  sad  philippic. 

"Yes,  it  has.  Without  the  frantic  adoration  of 
that  most  enlightened  people  of  Western  Europe, 
we  Russians  would  not  have  been  so  complacent  at 
the  ignorance  and  backwardness  of  our  people. 
That  French  courtship  set  the  autocracy  the 
more  firmly  in  their  pleased  self-sufficiency.  It 
put  back  progress,  really.  It  showed  Russia  she 
had  nothing  to  fear  from  the  powers  or  public 
opinion  of  Europe.  And  then  the  French  money! 


152         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

The  millions  and  millions  of  francs !  Where  are 
they?  One  loan  is  borrowed;  and  then  another 
loan  is  needed  to  pay  the  interest  due.  Haut 
finance  that,  surely !  Oh !  great  is  De  Witte,  and 
Wishnegradski  before  him!  What  can  he  show 
for  the  French  millions?  Of  a  truth  there  would 
never  have  been  this  war  if  it  had  not  been  for 
those  French  loans.  And  if  anything  happened, 
and  the  French  wanted  their  money  back,  I  sup- 
pose we  would  be  like  Turkey,  with  an  international 
board  to  manage  our  finances.  I  suppose  that  is 
what  is  ahead  of  Russia,  after  this  year's  downfall 
and  disgrace.  And  yet,  see  what  a  proud  place 
we  held  a  year  ago !  The  foremost  power  in 
Europe!  The  greatest  military  power.  And 
now?  Under  the  chief  command  of  a  thick- 
waisted,  short-winded  admiral-viceroy  we  have  lost, 
lost,  lost — every  battle,  every  engagement  and 
skirmish,  all  the  affairs  of  outposts.  Never  a  vic- 
tory. Only  General  Riickwarts!  General  Ruck- 
warts  in  command.  And  Russia!  Great  Russia! 
— has  come  to  this !" 

Silence  fell.  No  one  spoke;  and  after  a  few 
puffs,  Esper  began  again:  "I  suppose  we  will  re- 
form the  army  after  this.  We  will  have  to.  Then, 
belonging  to  the  Guards  or  any  of  the  crack  corps 
and  standing  well  socially  in  Petersburg,  will  not 
stand  with  the  examining  boards.  Those  of  us 
who  are  blockheads  will  be  weeded  out  and  set  to 


IN  KAKI  TIME  153 

guarding  wells  and  canals  in  Trans-Caspia.  I 
don't  know  that  they  will  change  much  in  regard 
to  the  men,  the  rank  and  file — except  to  give  the 
poor  beggars  better  food  or  more  pay.  They  will  do 
very  well  as  they  are — Kanonen-f utter,  Kanonen- 
futter.  I  don't  take  all  this  sentimentalism  about 
the  man  who  carries  the  rifle.  There's  socialism 
in  it ;  and  all  these  great  ladies  of  the  Red  Cross 
washing  the  mujik's  wounds  and  binding  up  his 
broken  leg,  is  rot.  A  soldier  is  just  a  soldier,  a 
machine  to  load,  aim,  and  fire;  to  shoot  and  get 
shot.  I  don't  think  of  him  as  a  man ;  of  each  unit 
in  a  long  line  of  thousands  in  the  same  uniforms 
as  a  man,  a  human  being,  a  person  like  myself, 
rny  relatives,  my  friends,  my  brother  officers  in 
front  of  these  lines.  No,  all  this  'brotherhood  of 
man'  sentimentality  is  rubbish.  A  soldier  is  a 
munition  of  war  merely,  like  the  cannons,  the 
rifles,  the  ammunition,  the  horses.  So  many 
thousands  of  each  article  go  to  make  an  army. 
It  is  quite  the  same  which  is  the  first  on  the  list. 

"You  do  not  think  of  each  individual  unit  as  a 
man,  a  brother,  an  immortal  soul,  when  you  see 
a  company  of  these  cursed  little  khaki-clad 
monkeys  drilling  around  here,  do  you?  I  think 
not.  Oh!  that  I  might  never  see  khaki  colour 
again !  All  Manchuria  is  khaki  colour — dead, 
dull,  dusty  brown.  And  I  suppose  we,  too,  will 
soon  be  in  khaki,  like  the  English,  and  like  the 


154          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

American  attaches  we  had  with  us.  Khaki! 
Khaki !  all  the  time  at  the  headquarters  mess. 
And  all  the  Japanese  a  wriggling  mass  of  khaki, 
like  a  ripe  millet  field  moving.  The  Japanese 
soldiers  are  all  khaki  colour,  except  their  eyes  and 
teeth.  I  looked  at  Kuroki  well,  when  he  rode  by 
to  inspect  the  prisoners.  Well,  he  was  all  khaki ; 
all  of  him,  clothes,  boots,  and  even  his  horse.  It 
made  me  bilious,  jaundiced.  Ugh!  All  the  earth, 
the  stubble,  the  standing  crops,  the  dead  millet 
stalks,  the  mud  houses,  the  Chinese  peasants  in 
them,  and  also  the  bare  hills.  Oh !  everything  was 
khaki  colour;  and  when  it  subsided,  we  Russians 
were  khaki  colour,  too — faces,  clothes,  hair,  caps 
— all  coated  an  inch  thick  with  the  infernal  yellow- 
brown  dust. 

"That  khaki  reminds  me  too  much  of  the  Eng- 
lish at  Peking,  in  1900;  and  of  those  outrageous 
Americans,  who  just  smiled  at  us  whenever  we 
tried  to  go  a  little  ahead  of  them  on  the  march 
to  Peking.  They  are  too  smart,  those  Americans. 
I  wish  Germany  would  thrash  them  well  and  take 
the  blague  out  of  them.  I  would  like  to  see  the 
English  and  the  Americans  fight  a  war  a 
Voutrance.  Then  there  would  be  peace  in  the 
world,  and  freedom  for  the  other  nations  of  the 
earth.  Those  two  stand  in  the  way  of  everything. 
It  is  these  two,  and  their  'open-door'  nonsense 
about  China,  that  brought  on  this  war,  anyhow. 


IN  KAKI  TIME  155 

They  put  Japan  up  to  fighting,  and  they  will 
profit  by  it  more  than  Japan,  their  little  cats- 
paw." 


Tuesday,  November  1st. 

That  silly  boy  M  -  has  tried  to  escape  again, 
and  only  wandered  about  for  the  night  in  a  paddy 
field  over  the  hills.  Of  course,  there  is  no  disguise 
for  a  tall  foreigner  here  ;  the  country  people  would 
not  hide  a  horio  in  their  houses  for  any  sum  of 
money;  and  if  he  had  reached  the  bay  and  found 
a  boat,  where  could  he  row  to?  where  get  food  or 
water?  It  is  such  childish  foolishness  to  try  to 
escape;  but  M—  -  said  he  could  not  stand  the 
confinement  and  monotony;  anything  was  better 
for  a  change.  He  had  been  deprived  of  liberty 
and  confined  to  his  own  temple  and  graveyard 
compound  for  a  previous  attempt  to  escape.  Now 
he  is  condemned  to  six  months'  imprisonment  ;  and 
he  is  taken  to  a  veritable  prison,  a  place  for  lock- 
ing up  criminals,  and  is  put  in  a  cell,  with  none  of 
his  own  people  to  speak  to.  Vladimir  says  it  is 
unaccountable  that  the  Japanese  did  not  shoot  him 
at  this  second  attempt.  In  any  other  army,  it  is 
the  rule. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
"LA  VEUVE  ANGLAISE" 

Wednesday,  November  2nd. 
we   had   a   charming  visitor— 
the  English  widow,  who  has  given  her  serv- 
ices to  the  Japanese  Red  Cross  Society  in  Tokyo. 

And  then  too  came  Mme.  H ,  sister  of  the 

bachelor  British  envoy,  who,  having  rolled  band- 
ages with  the  court  ladies  in  Tokyo  and  visited 
the  hospitals  there,  was  interested  to  see  the  Red 
Cross  work  in  the  provinces.  She  was  like 
an  apparition  from  another  world,  as  she  came  into 
our  ward  in  her  mourning  robes,  with  the  white 
halo,  the  white  collar-band  and  cuffs,  as  immacu- 
late as  if  in  London  that  minute.  My  eyes  rested 
upon  her,  fascinated,  and  then  the  chief-surgeon 
passed  her  over  to  me.  The  soft  English  voice 
was  music  to  my  ears ;  the  very  sight  of  her  was 
refreshment  after  my  long  routine  of  unbroken 
days  among  nurses,  doctors,  kimono-clad  patients, 
and  others  in  parts  of  their  uniforms. 

Grievsky  ruffled  like  a  porcupine  when  he  saw 
her,  was  stiff,  stolid,  and  barely  courteous,  I  after- 
wards told  him.  "But  oh!  Those  English!"  he 
exclaimed.  "Must  they  follow  me,  haunt  me  even 

156 


"LA  VEUVE  ANGLAISE"  157 

here?  Ach  Gott!  All  their  tourists  in  pith 
helmets,  with  red  guidebooks,  will  come  next. 
Sightseeing!  My  God!  The  eight  remarkable 
views  of  lyo  province !  And  we,  the  horios,  are 
one  of  them.  All  of  them,  I  might  think,  the  way 
some  of  these  old  Kakamakis  on  the  roads  stare  at 
me — stare  at  me  with  their  back  teeth!  their 
palates !  their  vocal  chords !  Ah,  me !  I  have 
come  to  this — to  be  a  curiosity !  An  animal  in  a 
cage !  A  monkey  at  the  Zoo !  A  Russian  bear  in 
captivity !"  And  the  usual  bang  on  the  table  con- 
cluded the  monologue. 

Our  English  visitor  left  her  niece  at  Hiroshima. 
And  her  niece  is  the  Countess  Foresta !  The 
Contessa  has  married,  buried  husband  and  child 
and  mother  since  I  saw  her,  and  is  now  travelling 
with  an  aunt  in  Japan.  The  Contessa  had  a  sad 
headache  from  going  so  rapidly  through  six  miles 
of  hospital  wards  at  Hiroshima  the  day  before, 
and  had  remained  there,  as  her  aunt  had  to  leave 
at  daylight  on  the  precise  day  as  prearranged  by 
the  Japanese  officials  who  accompanied  her  to 
Matsuyama.  I  begged  her  to  remain  another  day 
and  to  telegraph  for  her  niece.  I  offered  my  house, 
and  the  chief-surgeon  urged  her  to  accept. 

I  must  have  come  in  like  a  whirlwind  in  my  great 
excitement,  for  Vladimir  turned  in  surprise.  I  sat 
down  weakly,  in  an  access  of  fear  lest  Vladimir 
should  denounce  me  for  what  I  had  done,  the 


158         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

complications  I  had  deliberately  pulled  down  out 
of  a  clear  sky. 

"Oh!  Sophia!  Sophia!  why  will  you  meddle 
with  such  things  !  Am  not  I,  and  my  forty-two 
wounds,  and  three  broken  bones,  enough,  without 
your  dragging  two  broken  hearts  into  the  scene? 
You  have  begun  it!  Now  what  will  be  the  end? 
Can  you  foresee  it  ?  Those  two  may  only  denounce 
you,  when  you  have  brought  them  together.  Let 
well  enough  alone.  Don't  try  to  control  fate,  to 
direct  destiny.  You  have  how  many  guest-rooms 
in  your  spacious  villa?  And  what  will  you  do 
when  you  get  la  belle  here?" 

"Do?"  I  cried.  "Heavens,  but  you  are  dense! 
Is  it  so  long  since  you  were  young,  Vladimir? 
Do?  What  did  you  do,  that  summer  you  met  me 
again  at  Yalta?  Did  you  need  phrase-books  to 
carry  on  conversations?  If  I  remember,  you"  — 
and  Vladimir  pulled  me  down  and  gave  me  a  lover's 
long  kiss.  "Yes,  that  is  just  what  you  did.  That 
is  what  I  expect  Lyov  to  do,  precisely.  And  then, 
all  will  be  settled." 


Friday,  November  4th. 

I  went  to  the  station  to  meet  the  Contessa.  I 
think  we  were  both  impressed  with  the  strange- 
ness of  our  meeting  in  this  way  and  here  —  la  belle 
having  run  through  the  whole  gamut  of  a  woman's 


"LA  VEUVE  ANGLAISE"  159 

soul-existence  since  I  had  seen  her.  She  had  lost 
husband,  child,  and  only  parent,  within  the  brief 
time — a  whole  chapter  of  tragedies.  Sorrow  has 
chastened  and  softened  her  beauty,  given  it  an 
appealing,  a  more  human  quality. 

After  the  banalities  of  formality,  she  indicated 
her  maid  and  guide ;  and  we  walked  on  through  the 
sunset  light  through  the  temple  grounds — past 
Dairinji,  and  into  the  narrow  street  that  leads  to 
the  moat.  With  the  side  of  my  eye,  I  took  in  the 
supple,  graceful  figure  in  severe  black,  that  walked 
with  me,  and — worldling  that  I  am — it  was  with 
the  joy  of  long  deprivation  that  I  noted  the  per- 
fect tailoring,  the  touches  of  modernity  in  the 
simple  costume.  It  was  my  own  world,  my  own 
kind  again ;  after  this  queer  life  here  in  a  far 
province,  seeing  no  foreign  women  for  days  on 
end,  save  Anna  in  her  cotton  frocks. 

"Ah,"  cried  la  belle,  as  we  came  out  of  the  little 
street  of  book  and  paper  shops  to  the  corner  of  the 
moat,  with  the  chateau  high  above  us,  just  show- 
ing its  black  gables  against  the  rose  and  gold  sky. 
"This  is  the  ideal.  This  is  my  castle  in  Japan, 
that  I  have  read  and  dreamed  of.  I  must  go  up 
there.  None  of  their  other  shiro's  and  gosho's 
come  up  to  this  for  placing.  And  what  a  dream 
of  a  trip  it  is  over  here  from  Ujina!  I  sat  in  the 
pilot-house  all  the  way.  I  could  not  lose  a  minute 
of  it.  Switzerland!  Italy!  Japan!  I  am  torn 


160         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

to  tell  you  which  one  is  the  most  beautiful  country 
on  earth.  Just  now,  it  is  this !  It  is  this !  It  is 
this !  And  so  strange !  So  different  from  all  the 
other  countries !  I  always  wanted  to  come  here. 
I  had  my  mind  quite  made  up  to  coming  to  Japan 
one  winter  in  Rome." 

We  had  a  dear  little  dinner  quite  by  ourselves, 
we  three;  la  belle  in  a  severe  white  gown,  that 
made  her  more  than  ever  a  goddess  of  beauty. 
Such  lines !  Such  pure  and  perfect  contours ! 
Such  fine  and  delicate  colour !  Certainly  one 
of  the  most  beautiful  countenances  I  have  ever 
looked  upon — a  sculptor's  model,  as  she  sat.  I 
have  not  looked  on  her  like  since  she  vanished  from 
me  in  Rome;  and  I  have  seen  so  little  of  beauty 
in  these  last  months,  that  I  could  not  keep  my 
eyes  from  her  face — nor  any  more  my  mind  from 
Lyov. 

It  was  arranged  for  them  to  see  the  sights,  and 
on  the  following  day  to  visit  the  hospitals  and 
Ide-bude-machi,  where  the  young  naval  officers 
have  a  charming  quartette.  The  Queen  of  Greece 
sent  the  piano,  the  violins  came  from  the  Grand 
Duchess  Serge's  funds,  and  those  clever  boys  have 
had  Japanese  make  other  instruments  for  them. 
They  play  well,  and  we  urge  them  to  go  on  tour 
when  they  return  to  Europe.  "The  Prison 
Orchestra!"  Consider  the  furor!  Tickets,  fifty 
roubles  at  least. 


CHAPTER  XVII 
"LA  BELLE  CANADIENNE" 

Saturday,  November  5th. 

T  HARDLY  dared  to  go  near  Lyov,  nor  yet  to 
•*•  stay  away.  I  felt  guilty.  I  had  excruci- 
ating dread  lest  he  find  me  out,  lest  my  face 
declare  my  embarrassment  when  I  looked  in  on 
him,  as  I  passed  to  Vladimir's  ward. 

"Oh!  Yes.  Thank  you;  a  thousand  times. 
Better,  I  suppose.  I  really  don't  know  though, 
that  it  makes  me  glad.  What  for?  What  for? 
Except  that  I  appreciate  the  past.  A  sound  body 
and  whole  bones !  What  blessings !"  he  sighed. 
"Do  you  know,  Sophia  Ivanovna,  I  had  a  curious 
dream  last  night?  We  were  all  in  Rome  again, 
dining  with  you.  We  drank  Aste  spumante  with 
the  fragrance  of  peaches;  I  can  faintly  taste,  re- 
member tasting  it,  yet.  We  were  all  there — the 
Canadian  beauty — Contessa  Foresta,  too. 

"Well,  something  happened,  a  fire,  an  explosion, 
or  Boni's  excavations,  or  a  campanile  collapsed 
with  us;  but  anyhow,  I  lay  among  great  stones 
that  weighed  on  me.  One  where  there  is  the  break 
in  my  leg,  and  another  on  this  slashed  arm.  I 
could  not  move.  You  and  Vladimir  were  there; 
161 


162         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

but  Vladimir  was  under  great  weights  too,  and 
you  were  trying  to  help  him  out.  La  belle  came 
to  me,  and  said:  'Come!'  I  struggled.  I  could 
not  move.  I  told  her  to  see  how  I  was  weighed 
down.  'Come  !'  she  said,  in  that  grand  manner  of 
hers  ;  and  suddenly,  I  felt  myself  rise  and  move  ! 
move  out,  move  past  all  these  wards,  the  operating 
room,  and  the  chancery.  We  passed  the  guard- 
house, we  went  past  the  sentries,  and  out,  out  ! 
Ach  Gott!  it  was  too  real.  I  have  lived  it  over, 
thought  it  over,  remembered  it  all  distinctly,  a 
hundred  times  since  I  woke.  I  see  her  now,  the 
very  curve  of  that  perfect  chin,  the  gold  lights  in 
her  hair.  Ah  me!  Sophia,  I  do  not  want  to  live. 
What  can  I  live  for,  hope  for  now?  Where  shall 
I  go  when  this  is  all  ended?  In  what  corner  of 
Europe  drag  out  my  maimed  life  ?  I,  a  cripple  !" 


"Oh,  Sophia!  Sophia!  See  what  you  have 
done  !"  said  Vladimir.  "You  have  loosed  the  fates, 
and  now  you  cannot  control  them.  Here's  the 
fourth  act  of  your  drama  coming  on  top  of  the 
first  scene  of  the  first  act.  Your  little  comedy,  if 
it  is  one,  and  not  a  tragedy,  does  not  develop 
artistically.  They  would  never  stage  it  at  the 
Gymnase,  nor  the  Odeon.  Your  events  are  moving 
too  fast.  How  are  you  going  to  hold  your  players 
back,  to  check  them  up?" 


"LA  BELLE  CANADIENNE"         163 

"But  she's  not  coming  here  to-day.  They  have 
only  telegraphed  for  permits  to  visit  the  prisoners' 
quarters,  so  they  cannot  come  till  to-morrow; 
and  they  went  this  morning  to  Tobe,  to  visit  the 
potteries.  They  can't  come  before  to-morrow." 

"Ah !  That  is  better.  You  will  have  to  think 
out  a  denouement — when  one  day  has  elapsed.  It 
is  your  affair,  not  mine.  I  wash  my  hands,  now, 
and  go  to  my  fauteuil  de  balcon  to  look  on.  But  I 
shall  criticise,  remember — like  a  brute,  like  Sarcey 
and  Scott  rolled  in  one." 

"But,  shall  I  tell  Lyov  first  that  she  is  here — in 
Japan — in  Matsuyama — in  my  house — in  this 
ward?  or  leave  them  to  explain  all  themselves?" 

"Oh,  heavens !  Sophia,  don't  ask  me.  Lead  up 
to  it  a  little,  I  beg  you.  Tell  him  that  la  Veuve 
Anglalse  of  yesterday  is  the  Contessa's  aunt  and 
sister  of  the  British  Minister,  who  has  just  this 
summer  come  out  to  Japan.  A  fine  time  to  change 
ministers  !  After  the  beginning  of  the  war !  But 
then,  Sir  John's  a  soldier,  and  better  than  the  pale 
civilian  with  a  liver,  who  has  gone  to  Carlsbad. 
Sir  John  is  a  dozen  of  his  predecessor  at  any  game 
— picquet,  cricket,  and  diplomacy.  Anyhow,  lead 
Lyov  up  to  the  possibilities.  Let  him  plan  it  in- 
side his  own  head,  if  you  can.  Tiens!  but  your 
drama  grows  interesting,  now  that  you've  called 
telepathy  to  your  aid.  Of  course,  the  mystic  air 
waves  have  carried  signals  of  her  presence,  as 


164         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

our  theosophical,  hypnotical,  mesmeric  friends  in 
Rome  would  say.  This  outdoes  all  the  seances  in 
the  Barberini  and  at  Monte  Giordano.  Lucky 
thing  that  Foresta  broke  his  neck  anyhow.  It 
wouldn't  do  for  the  dramatic  unities  to  have  him 
around,  alive,  on  the  stage,  now.  He's  better  in 
background,  in  far  perspective.  It  would  take  a 
whole  act  to  put  him  out  of  the  way." 

I  let  Lyov  tell  me  his  dream  once  again;  and 
then  asked  what  he  thought  of  la  Veuve  Anglalse. 
Ah!  bas!  he  hadn't  thought.  He  had  not  looked. 
"But  does  she  remind  you  of  any  one?"  I  asked. 
"Is  she  like  any  one  you  knew  in  Rome?" 

"Oh,  yes,"  she  reminded  him  of  her  one  hundred 
twin  sisters,  all  replicas  of  the  same  conventional 
veuve  Anglalse — grand  deuil  or  deml-deull,  they 
were  all  veuves  to  him. 

"But,"  I  said,  "she  is  the  sister  of  the  new 
British  Minister,  you  know,  and  he  is  the  uncle  of 
the  Contessa  Foresta.  Now  do  you  think  any- 
thing at  all?" 

Lyov  stared  at  me  for  a  full  minute.  "By  all 
the  saints  1  Sophia  Ivanovna!"  he  said,  slowly, 
with  difficulty.  "I  don't  know  what  she  looked 
like ;  whom  she  looked  like.  Not  like  mm  Mira,  as 
you  know.  For  no  one  ever  was  as  beautiful  as 
she.  But  Sophia!  That  dream!  It  was  a  mes- 
sage from  mia  Mira  last  night.  She  must  know 
that  I  am  here.  She  will  come  and  lead  me  out.  I 


"LA  BELLE  CANADIENNE"         165 

believe  it.  Has  la  Veuve  gone?  Will  she  come 
here  again?  Oh,  ask  her,  and  tell  me  everything 
about  la  belle  —  and  —  Foresta,  too.  Yes,  I  want 
to  know.  Is  she  happy?  Will  Foresta  live  for- 
ever, do  you  think?  There  are  great  epidemics 
and  new  diseases  nowadays,  you  know.  And  Italy 
may  go  to  war,  too,  some  day.  Ah  !  I  shall  mend." 


My  ladies  came  back  charmed  with  their  day's 
excursion,  and  loaded  with  vases  and  figurines  of 
the  soft  ivory-white  Tobe-yaki,  that  is  so  nearly 
the  priceless  old  blanc  de  Clime  that  I  have  always 
loved  the  most.  The  Contessa  knows  Oriental  and 
shares  my  passion  for  blanc  de  Chine.  And,  by 
the  way,  if  I  live  to  be  a  hundred  years  old,  blanc 
de  Chine  will  never  be  the  same  again,  and  always 
must  remind  me  of  Matsuyama.  For  we  eat  and 
drink  from  Tobe-yaki  plates  and  cups,  and  Tobe- 
yaki  vases  hold  our  flowers. 

"Do  you  see  this?"  said  the  Contessa.  "Well, 
upon  the  advice  of  my  superior  guide,  I  have  just 
paid  an  old  sinner  named  Dorobu,  in  Kyoto,  — 
never  go  to  him  by  the  way,  —  sixty-six  yens  for 
just  such  another  trumpery  little,  white  vase  with 
lions'  heads  near  the  collar.  The  very  twin,  the 
very  twin  of  this  one.  So,  I  demanded  of  M.  le 
Courier,  when  I  saw  all  these  at  Tobe,  how  it  is? 
and  if  he  doesn't  think  that  precious  bit  of  old 


166         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

pai-tzu,  or  chien  yao,  came  from  this  same  kiln  at 
Tobe." 

"What  did  he  say?" 

"Oh!  what  they  always  say  when  cornered: 
'Very  curious!  Very  curious.'  And  by  the  way, 
we  had  an  addition  to  our  party  to-day.  At  the 
second  station,  a  Japanese  officer  came  in,  bowed 
to  us,  and  after  a  time  spoke.  He  said  he  was 
from  the  headquarters  office,  and  would  go  with 
us  to  Tobe,  if  we  wished.  If  we  wished !  The  idea ! 
Of  course,  he  was  detailed  for  that  very  duty — to 
trail  us,  to  listen,  and  question,  and  pump  us,  and 
to  put  it  all  down  in  those  notebooks  of  theirs. 
I  suppose  it  is  necessary  in  time  of  war;  as  Aunt 
Ellen  and  I  might  liberate  all  these  prisoners. 
Japan,  without  the  gendarmes,  and  the  policemen, 
and  their  notebooks,  would  be  so  much  more 
charming.  Except  for  the  passport  nuisance,  it 
might  as  well  be  Russia  here.  They  are  mad  on 
the  subject  of  spies.  Say:  'Rotan!  Rotan!'  and 
they  go  off  their  heads  at  once.  Even  Uncle  John 
advised  me  not  to  go  near  the  prisoners  here,  and 
to  always  explain  that  I  was  English,  even  claim 
to  be  an  American,  rather  than  emphasise  my 
Italian  name.  It  seems  that  the  Great  Republic 
is  most  in  favour  now,  in  spite  of  the  English  Alli- 
ance; much  to  the  disgust  of  mine  uncle.  It 
ruffles  him. 

"Our  little  officer,  however,  was  very  agreeable. 


"LA  BELLE  CANADIENNE"         167 

He  had  a  charming  manner,  and  if  he  was  a  little 
slow  with  his  English  at  first,  he  had  a  good  day's 
practice  lesson  in  colloquial.  I  was  his  pedante. 
I  felt  just  like  one  of  the  pedantes  walking  their 
boy  pupils  around  the  Pincio.  I  made  him  talk  to 
all  the  old  peasants  for  me,  and  ask  if  they  had 
sons  at  war,  and  we  gave  them  money  and — oh! 
one  old  woman,  who  was  carrying  a  big  bundle  of 
staves  along  the  road,  said  she  had  two  kodomos  at 
the  war,  and  one  of  them  had  sent  her  a  yen,  and 
the  government  gave  the  son's  wife  two  yens  a 
month  for  the  family  of  six !  Think  of  it !  She 
pays  fifty  sens  a  month  for  the  rent  of  a  house; 
house  she  called  it,  o'uchi.  What  could  it  be  like 
for  fifty  sens?  She  earns  twenty  sens  a  day, 
carrying  staves  from  the  mountain  down  into  the 
town,  two  round  trips ;  four  miles  in  the  morning, 
and  four  in  the  afternoon.  And  this  was  her  last 
trip  down,  poor  thing.  We  put  the  little  old 
brownie  into  my  kuruma,  bundle  and  all.  You 
should  have  seen  her  face  when  the  thing  moved 
off!  I  gave  her  money  to  buy  katsuo-bushi,  rice, 
and  some  good  strong  sake  for  her  honourable 
old  health,  and  Aunt  Ellen  sent  money  for  winter 
flannels  for  the  son's  children — four  of  them. 
Wouldn't  you  know  Madame  la  Tante  was  English 
by  that  ?  Flannels !  Oh  !  soup  and  flannels,  to  be 
sure,  for  the  parish  poor ! 

"Well,  when  we  got  to  the  station  there  was  our 


168         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

old  woman  with  all  the  family.  The  o'uclii  was 
emptied  out  and  drawn  up  on  the  platform  in  a 
bowing  row;  even  the  baby  on  her  back  bobbed 
its  head,  when  mother  and  grandmother  bobbed. 
All  our  beneficiaries  of  the  day  were  bobbing  there, 
too.  And  policeman  and  gendarmes  ! — a  few — 
many  hundreds  of  them,  with  those  notebooks,  of 
course.  Being  such  distinguished  visitors,  with 
military  escort  and  the  whole  police  department  all 
out  in  our  honour,  we  tried  to  meet  the  situation. 
We  managed  to  make  up  an  even  fifty  yens,  and 
asked  the  chief  of  police  to  give  it  to  the  most 
needy  of  the  soldiers'  families,  as  our  appreciation 
of  a  day  in  Tobe. 

"  'To  how  many  families  ?'  asked  the  chief, 
while  a  sub  took  notes  for  him  in  a  wretched  little 
black  book.  'We  have  twenty  most  needy  families, 
eighty  families  in  distress,  and  one  hundred  and 
eleven  families  insufficiently  supplied  in  this  dis- 
trict.' 

"We  assigned  it  to  the  twenty  most  needy,  and 
I  shall  send  eighty  yens  over  for  the  families  in 
distress.  Although  you  see  no  beggars  and  no 
misery  flaunted  here,  there  must  be  great  suffering 
among  the  reservists'  families.  This  government 
relief  of  two  yens  a  month  is  not  enough  to  feed 
whole  families,  old  women,  young  children  and  all. 
Oh !  that  this  war  were  over !  And  I  suppose  you 
wish  it  more  fervently  than  I,  Madame  von  Theill? 


"LA  BELLE  CANADIENNE"         169 

How  happy  if  we  were  all  in  Rome  again !  At 
your  villa  as  before." 

"Yes.  If  we  were  only  back  in  Rome  again ! 
Vladimir  in  an  invalid  chair  on  the  sunny  terrace, 
as  he  likes  to  picture  himself,  watching  the  Forum 
through  the  telescope.  If  we  only  were !  To  see 
Vladimir,  and  Boni,  and  Lyov  Siemenoff  putter- 
ing over  a  box  of  green,  copper  scraps  would  give 
me  all  the  joy  in  the  world." 

At  the  mention  of  Lyov's  name,  she  lifted  her 
eyes  and  looked  clear  through  me  and  my  bungling 
conspiracies. 

"Is  M.  Siemenoff  here  in  Matsuyama?"  she  put 
to  me  point-blank. 

"His — servant  was  brought  to  the  hospital 
some  weeks  ago,"  I  weakly  stammered. 

"Where  was  his  master  then?"  and  the  eyes, 
looking  through  my  transparent  answer,  put  me 
in  the  flutter  that  I  had  expected  the  mention  of 
Lyov's  name  to  produce  in  her.  I  blurted  out  all  I 
knew,  and  submitted  to  her  cross-questioning  in 
penitence.  A  judge  in  court  could  not  have  been 
more  calm  and  judicial  than  she. 

"I  shall  stay  here  with  my  maid,  if  you  will  let 
me  share  your  menage?"  said  the  impassive  one; 
and  at  least  seven  scenes  of  my  melodrama  were 
swept  away.  They  do  things  differently  in  this 
generation,  I  see.  At  least,  the  joke  is  on  Vladi- 
mir for  once. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
LOVERS'  MEETING 

Sunday,  November  6th. 

T  IEUTENANT  ITO  came  to  luncheon  with  us, 
•"•^ '  and  incidentally  we  explained  to  him  that 
the  Contessa  and  I  were  old  friends  in  Rome ;  that 
I  lived  in  Rome  always  in  the  winter  and  went  to 
England  in  the  summer;  that  I  had  not  been  in 
Russia  for  five  years,  when  the  war  broke  out. 

"Naruhodo!"  (wonderful)  said  the  lieutenant 
at  that ;  and  "Naruhodo!"  he  said  again  when  the 
Contessa  told  of  Vladimir's  occupations  in  archae- 
ology. "Ah !  he  studies  and  learns  something  for 
the  good  of  his  country." 

We  repeated  the  Von  Theill  autobiography  to 
make  it  quite  clear,  and  then  told  him  as  distinctly 
that  la  Contessa  Foresta,  although  a  widow  of  an 
Italian  officer,  had  been  made  a  British  subject 
again  by  the  courts  at  Ottawa.  All  this  for  the 
benefit  of  the  headquarters,  where,  of  course,  it 
was  put  in  writing  post-haste. 

I  looked  in  on  Lyov,  as  I  went  by,  and  told  him 
that  la   Veuve  would  come  again,  and  that  she 
could  tell  him  about  the  widow  of  Count  Foresta. 
170 


LOVERS'  MEETING  171 

"Widow !"  shouted  Lyov,  almost  leaping  from 
his  bandages;  and  such  a  light  flashed  over  his 
face,  such  a  look  came  in  his  eyes,  as  it  is  not  fit 
for  any,  but  the  one  woman  in  all  the  world,  to 
meet  in  man's  eyes.  It  was  the  real  Lyov  again, 
the  handsome  young  giant  of  the  frank  face  and 
laughing  eyes,  that  we  had  lost  in  Rome. 

And  Vladimir !  Oh !  man  !  man !  what  incon- 
sistencies are  thine!  He  knew  the  Contessa  would 
act  in  just  that  way.  He  knew  it  would  come  out, 
just  as  he  said  it  would.  Anyhow,  the  affaire  de 
cceur,  that  seemed  out  of  my  hands  already,  was 
doing  him  good — a  tonic  that  braced  him  visibly 
and  took  his  mind  off  his  woes  and  Russia's  woes. 

When  the  orderly  told  me  the  Barina  were  com- 
ing, I  ran  to  Lyov  to  straighten  his  pillows  and 
arrange  my  mise  en  scene.  "The  two  English 
ladies  are  coming  soon,"  I  said. 

"Two !  Ah-h !"  sighed  Lyov  slowly,  luxuri- 
ously, closing  his  eyes.  "I  knew  it." 

Did  he?  Indeed!  Really,  he  and  Vladimir  are 
too  much. 

While  the  officers  greeted  the  great  English 
Kangofu,  I  gave  the  Contessa  the  routine  account 
of  the  nurse's  duties,  how  the  watches  were  kept, 
the  milk  chilled,  the  water  heated — and  she  looked 
at  me.  Looked  through  me  again  for  a  change, 
and  looked  protest  at  the  idle  delay. 

The  chief -surgeon  lifted  the  curtain.    "Captain 


172         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

Siemenoff,  one  of  General  Mistchenko's  officers, 
severely  wounded  at  the  Shaho,"  he  said,  and  as 
the  Contessa  stepped  in  ahead  of  us,  I  started 
hastily  for  Vladimir's  alcove  as  refuge,  and  almost 
ran  into  Grievsky.  I  presented  him.  He  bent  low 

over  Madame  H 's  hand,  and  Andrew  Y 

shuffled  his  straw  sandals  together  and  paid  his 
compliments.  We  all  walked  on  together  to 
Vladimir,  whose  face  was  blank  inquiry,  for  no 
Contessa  appeared  with  us.  I  went  back  to  tell 
that  the  samovar  waited,  and  Lyov,  looking  at  me 
with  defiant  impatience,  said:  "She  does  not  want 
tea." 

We  laughed,  the  Contessa  bent  and  said  some- 
thing, and  I  pulled  her  away  as  the  ferret-inter- 
preter and  a  nurse  passed  by.  In  some  way,  I 
knew  the  affair  was  settled,  and  out  of  my  hand. 
There  was  a  sense  of  ownership,  an  air  of  pro- 
prietorship in  the  magnificent  way  in  which  Lyov 
put  me  aside  and  outside  of  it  all,  and  my  share  in 
the  affair  was  plainly  over. 

The  samovar  was  hissing,  the  sun  shone,  the  air 
of  the  little  cubicle  was  full  of  chrysanthemum 
spice,  and  all  was  good  cheer.  Every  man 
paid  adoring  court  to  the  beautiful  woman — the 
first  they  had  seen  for  ages.  And  how  old  and 
yellow,  faded  and  wrinkled,  we  others  looked  be- 
side that  piece  of  human  perfection ! 

She  carried  a  cup  of  tea  to  Lyov,  waving  aside 


LOVERS'  MEETING  173 

all  offers  of  assistance,  and  dumfounding  me 
by  the  quiet  matter  of  fact:  "Two  lumps,  please, 
and  a  bit  of  lemon,  he  likes." 

She  came  back  for  bread  and  butter;  she  came 
again  for  a  second  cup  of  tea.  "The  nurse  says 
he  is  much  better  this  afternoon,"  said  the  Goddess 
condescendingly,  as  if  I  were  a  stranger  in  the 
ward;  and  I  retorted  with  the  malice  of  the  old 
cat  I  can  be :  "Oh,  the  nurse !  I  am  glad  you  have 
a  duenna  in  there."  And  was  immediately  sorry 
for  what  I  had  said. 

When  our  little  tea-party  broke  up,  the  Con- 
tessa  was  first  to  reach  Lyov's  curtain,  and  said: 
"Good-bye,  Captain  Siemenoff.  I  hope  we  have 
not  excited  or  made  you  worse." 

"Oh !  quite  to  the  contrary ;  you  have  made  me 
well.  Enter,  I  beg  of  you." 

We  all  went  in  to  see  the  artful  beggar.  The 
surgeon  looked  surprised  at  the  change  in  his 
patient — at  the  smiling,  radiant  countenance,  the 
strong  cheerful  voice. 

"Why,  the  Captain  san  is  four  weeks  better 
than  he  was  this  morning !" 

"I  shall  get  up  to-morrow  morning;  and  if  the 
honourable  chief-surgeon  permits  the  Contessa 
Foresta  to  give  me  the  same  tea  to-morrow,  I  shall 
walk  the  next  day;  and  carry  my  trunk  to  the 
Kokaido  the  third  day." 

"Ah !  and  me !    Poor  me !    Me  also !"  cried  Griev- 


174          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

sky.  "Will  not  the  gracious  Contessa  give  me 
tea,  too — now — to-morrow — oh !  at  any  time  ? 
Oh !  honourable  doctor,  please  prescribe  that  same 
tisane  for  me.  Tea  a  VAnglaise.  Everything 
a  VAnglaise  for  me.  I  also  desire  to  go  and  live  at 
the  Kokaido,  and  wear  real  clothes  again." 

"Ah!  Me!  Me!"  cried  Akimoff,  waving  his 
crutch  above  the  floor.  "Eikoku,  Ingirisu  o'cha 
(English,  English  tea).  I  will  drink  it  too. 
Litres  of  it !  Litres  of  it !  If  the  Contessa  Foresta 
herself  prescribes  it  and  gives  it."  The  Japanese 
officers  laughed  gleefully  at  the  mock  comedy,  and 
the  nesans  giggled  sympathetically. 

"I  shall  return,"  said  the  Contessa,  speaking 
directly  to  Lyov.  And  the  others,  all  uncompre- 
hending, capped  it  by  wailing  humourously:  "Re- 
turn— in  the  springtime  ?  Oh  no,  Madame  la  Con- 
tessa, to-morrow,  to-morrow.  We  beg  you." 

"Yes.  Surely.  Will  the  honourable  doctor 
prescribe  my  tisane  for  all  the  patients,  if  they  are 
really  better  in  the  morning?" 

"Saio  de  gozarimasu"  said  the  little  doctor, 
helpless  with  laughter  and  under  the  spell  of  her 
beauty  as  much  as  we  westerners. 


CHAPTER  XIX 
THE  FOREIGNER  KWANNON 

Monday,  November  7th. 

T  A  CONTESSA  and  her  aunt  and  I,  and  the 
•*— '  faithful  Lieutenant  Ito,  of  course,  went  to 
Dogo  and  saw  the  sights — the  hot  springs,  where 
Jingo  Kogo  stopped  to  bathe  on  her  way  to  the 
conquest  of  Korea;  and  the  rooms  in  the  bathing 
pavilion  occupied  by  the  present  Crown  Prince  of 
Japan,  when  he  came  to  lyo  province  a  few  seasons 
since.  The  bathing  pool  is  the  heart  of  the  village, 
the  market  place  and  social  exchange,  as  much  as 
the  Forum  of  Augustus  at  Rome.  It  is  never 
closed,  and  hums  night  and  day  with  the  com- 
panies of  men,  and  of  women  and  children,  who 
boil  in  separate  pools.  There  are  pools  of  differ- 
ent degrees  in  their  heat  and  sulphur  strength,  but 
only  a  Japanese  could  endure  the  hottest  of  all. 
There  are  parties  of  Russian  officers  at  Dogo  every 
day.  The  country  people  and  the  villagers  re- 
ceive them  kindly  and  pleasantly,  and  no  one 
looking  on  would  think  the  horio  sans  (honour- 
able prisoners)  any  different  from  other  foreign 
tourists,  who  now  and  then  visit  this  faraway 
175 


J76         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

province.  The  village  children  are  always  on  the 
alert  for  the  coming  of  the  Rokokos  (Russians), 
bob  their  little  courtesies,  and,  just  as  surely,  re- 
ceive some  present. 

If  we  had  been  by  ourselves,  three  ladies,  they 
might  have  let  us  look  in  upon  the  tank,  where  the 
women  and  children  chatter  by  the  half-hour,  up 
to  their  necks  in  hot  water,  but  regulations  do  not 
permit  mixed  bathing,  nor  for  a  man  to  look  in. 
Our  little  officer,  too,  was  enough  of  Modern 
Japan  to  be  consumed  with  a  mauvaise  honte  over 
the  naturalness  and  simplicity  of  the  national 
bathing  customs,  and  so  distressed  lest  we  should 
remark  too  much  upon  it,  that  we  could  only  stop 
a  moment  to  comment  on  the  chirp  and  chatter 
from  the  community  bath-tubs,  and  to  note  the 
thumps  on  the  big  barrel  drum  that  warns  them  of 
the  passing  quarter-hours. 

Tea  houses  surround  this  central  bath-house, 
and  they  all  possess  stores  of  beautiful  screens 
and  pictures  that  are  brought  out  to  beautify  the 
rooms  of  the  convalescent  Japanese  officers,  sent 
to  these  springs  to  recuperate — heroes  to  the 
worshipping  Dogo  people,  who  overwhelm  them 
with  gifts  and  attentions.  In  lesser  degree,  the 
convalescents  of  the  rank  and  file  receive  the  grati- 
tude of  their  fellow  subjects.  They  are  quartered 
in  the  garden  pavilions  and  tea  houses  of  the  public 
park,  on  the  site  of  the  old  castle  of  the  Hisamatsu 


THE  FOREIGNER  KWANNON       177 

family.  The  moats  are  dry,  but  their  embank- 
ments and  stone  walls  remain,  and  the  glacis  of 
the  old  fortress  is  a  sloping  lawn  planted  with 
young  cherry  and  plum  trees. 

I  must  admit  that  a  Japanese  hospital  is  the 
cleanest,  most  spotless  and  immaculate  place  in  all 
the  world.  For  one  thing,  the  soft  matted  floors 
are  as  clean  as  the  white  beds  laid  on  the  floor,  and 
the  Red  Cross  kimonos  of  white  calico  carry  out 
the  symphony  in  white.  And  the  Japanese  faces, 
yellow  as  they  are,  are  always  so  shiningly  clean. 
I  wish  our  poor  dirty  Cossacks  could  be  like  them 
in  this  regard,  but  their  heavy  boots,  coarse  skins, 
and  wild  mops  of  hair  on  head  and  face,  make  them 
unattractive  at  best.  And  the  white  kimono,  with 
their  heavy  leather  boots,  finishes  any  chance  of 
their  being  objects  of  Russian  pride.  We  are  not 
a  pretty  people  in  masses ;  not  an  artistic  race, 
not  an  aesthetic  nation.  One  pities,  only  pities  the 
poor  Cossacks  that  they  do  not  possess  that  in- 
definable quality,  charm;  pities  them  that  they 
cannot  be  cleaner  and  more  civilised-looking; 
pities  their  ignorance,  and  that  they  are  not  even 
able  to  know  how  low  in  the  scale  of  civilisation 
they  are.  Ach  Gottl  what  years,  what  genera- 
tions lie  before  poor,  distracted,  incompetent, 
ignorant,  and  uneducated,  half-awakened  Russia 
before  its  peasants  and  work  people  can  be  as  clean 
and  well  educated  as  these  average  Japanese. 


178         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

Talk  about  the  awakening  of  China!  Let  us 
wake  up  Russia  first. 

The  Japanese  invalids  sat  up  on  their  futons 
and  made  nice  bows  when  we  were  introduced,  and 
I  felt  myself  a  museum  specimen,  when  they  ex- 
plained me  to  the  convalescent  company.  The 
surgeon  told  them  that  my  master  lay  at  the 
barracks  hospital,  wounded  forty-two  times;  that 
I  had  come  all  the  way  from  Russia  to  nurse  him ; 
and  that  as  a  thank-offering  I  had  given  a 
thousand  yens  to  the  Red  Cross  and  to  the  Volun- 
teer Nurses'  Societies.  Then,  down  on  the  mats 
went  every  black  head,  after  a  chorus  of  wonder- 
ing "So  desk  a?  s"  (is  that  so?)  and  "Naru- 
hodo's!"  (wonderful),  had  interrupted  the  sur- 
geon. Beginning  with  the  first  invalid  on  my  right, 
each  made  some  little  expression  in  Japanese,  that 
they  were  sorry  the  Japanese  soldiers  had  hurt  my 
husband  and  made  me  so  much  trouble;  but  that 
these  accidents  must  happen  in  war;  and  that  it 
was  hard  luck  that  the  bravest  men  were  always 
wounded  first  and  most  severely.  They  thanked 
me  for  my  gifts  to  the  Red  Cross,  and  they 
thanked  me,  quite  as  much  as  they  thanked  the 
great  English  Kangofu,  for  coming  to  see  them. 

One  man  without  arms  had  not  been  able  to 
raise  himself  at  all;  so,  while  the  others  were  dis- 
tributing their  picture  books  and  gifts,  I  talked  to 
him  in  Japanese,  and  told  him  more  of  his  visitors. 


THE  FOREIGNER  KWANNON       179 

"Is  that  one  a  Kangofu  too?"  he  asked,  looking 
toward  the  Contessa.  "I  wish  she  would  stay  here 
at  Dogo.  She  looks  like  the  Kwannon  at  my  home 
temple.  It  is  like  hearing  Kwannon  talk.  Maybe 
Kwannon  can  talk  English,  too." 

We  watched  the  young  recruits  doing  calis- 
thenics and  vaulting  on  the  castle  drill  ground 
near  headquarters ;  and,  saddest  sight  of  all,  saw 
the  relatives  of  the  soldiers  waiting  in  the  open 
pavilion  of  a  visitors'  shed.  The  reservists 
called  in  some  weeks  ago  go  to  Manchuria  this 
week;  and  for  days  the  town  has  been  full  of 
country  people,  who  have  come  in  to  see  them  off — 
pathetic  old  fathers  and  mothers,  women  with 
flocks  of  children,  and  always  the  baby  on  the 
back,  sometimes  borrowed,  I  am  sure,  to  account 
for  the  universality  of  the  fashion. 

"Okasama!  Okasama!  Anata  Tobe  sakujitsu?" 
( Madam,  madam !  You  were  at  Tobe  day  before 
yesterday?)  said  one  to  the  Contessa,  and  immedi- 
ately the  visitors'  shed  was  in  agitation.  The 
whole  countryside  had  evidently  heard  of  the  visit 
of  the  benevolent  Kangofu,  and  they  surrounded 
us,  bowing  and  making  nice  polite  speeches  of 
praise  for  the  kindness  of  the  foreign  ladies. 
"And  are  you  English  Kangofu  also?"  they  asked 
me,  noticing  my  Red  Cross  badge.  I  hesitated  for 
a  moment,  before  I  electrified  them  with  the  an- 
nouncement that  I  was  a  Russian  Kangofu.  Some 


180         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

started  back  in  surprise  and  repulsion,  and  others 
came  nearer  to  look  their  fill  at  such  a  living  curio. 
"Let  me  see !  Let  me  have  a  look !"  wailed  a  tooth- 
less old  man,  whose  sight  wa«  dim,  whose  face  was 
one  mass  of  fine  wrinkles.  "I  have  never  seen  a 
Russian  until  to-day,  and  that  was  only  a  sailor. 
I  want  to  see  a  Russian  woman."  After  a  long, 
slow  scrutiny,  "Old  Age"  turned  away  from  me 
wearily.  "Why,  she  is  just  like  other  foreign 
women,  like  the  missionaries  who  come  to  our  vil- 
lage every  week.  Not  different.  I  thought  the 
Russians  were  all  very  big  and  fierce,  fierce  as 
tigers,  and  had  red  hair.  This  one  has  the  same 
high  beak  and  the  sharp  eyes  of  a  bird,  like  all  the 
other  foreign  women.  That  is  all."  I  sank  far, 
far  down,  in  even  my  own  estimation,  when  the 
company  of  deep-voiced  old  women  politely  agreed 
with  him  in  a  chorus  of  "Saio  de  gozarimasu!" 

We  managed  it  very  well  at  the  barracks  that 

afternoon.  Madame  H stayed  at  home  to 

rest  and  receive  some  ladies  of  the  Red  Cross 
Society.  The  guide  secured  some  charming  dwarf 
trees,  and  those  venerable  pines,  and  cedars,  and 
maples,  as  seen  through  the  reverse  of  an  opera 
glass,  distracted  even  me  from  noticing  how  often 
and  for  how  long  the  Contessa  was  with  Lyov. 
That  was  a  triumph  of  Japan's  floral  art  surely ! 

Ah !  Japan !  Japan !  Why  do  you  go  to  war, 
and  slash,  and  shoot,  and  slaughter,  and  wallow  in 


THE  FOREIGNER  KWANNON       181 

blood,  when  you  can  grow  these  adorable  trees  and 
do  other  things  so  much  better? 

Leave  battle  and  murder  to  our  Cossacks  and  to 
the  Turcomans,  who  can  do  nothing  else.  It  dis- 
concerts me  to  find  these  Japanese  supreme  in  the 
barbaric,  murderous  arts  of  war  that  require  no 
civilisation.  It  shocks  me  to  think  of  an  artistic, 
flower-loving  people  going  to  war!  To  bloody, 
untidy,  expensive  war!  It  is  incongruous. 


The  Contessa  and  Lieutenant  Ito  stayed  as  long 
as  I  did  that  afternoon,  for  we  had  music  after 
the  tea,  and  all  who  could  walk,  or  limp,  or  be 
helped  in,  came  to  listen.  Poor  Lyov  had  to  lie 
far  away,  to  hear  only  and  not  see.  For  his  bene- 
fit we  went  to  his  alcove,  with  Akimoff's  violin, 
and  sang  the  Ave  Maria  over  again. 

Later,  the  Contessa  and  I  walked  far  up  the 
moat  side  to  a  curio  shop,  where  I  knew  a  tea  bowl 
was  waiting.  We  came  home  through  the  street 
of  shops  and  we  talked  of  —  Japanese  pottery  !  of 
Bizen  and  Seto!  of  Awata  and  Satsuma!  of 
Karatsu  and  the  rest  !  Was  ever  anything  so 
banal  ! 

There  was  a  local  fete  going  on  at  a  temple, 
and  a  woman  stood  in  the  gateway  holding  a  strip 
of  cotton  cloth  with  needles  and  black  thread  for 


182         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

the  "Sen  nin  Riki"  (one  thousand  people's 
strength).  The  Contessa  stopped  and  made  a 
cross  stitch  and  bit  the  thread,  and  then  I  stitched 
a  knot  on  the  bit  of  white  cloth  which  the  soldier- 
husband  will  wear  to  war  —  a  girdle  which  will 
endue  him  with  the  strength  of  a  thousand  people, 
and  by  their  thousand  prayers  carry  him  safely 
through  all  dangers.  With  every  draft  of  troops 
that  go  to  the  war,  many  are  provided  with  these 
magic  belts. 


And  now  that  my  guests  are  gone,  and  life  is 
running  along  in  its  same  routine,  I  have  a  strange 
sensation  of  something  come  and  gone;  something 
missed  from  my  life.  I  feel  as  if  I  had  been  in 
Rome,  or  as  if  suddenly  snatched  away  from  it. 
I  indulge  in  day-dreams,  too.  Lyov  must  have  the 
permission  of  his  commanding  officer  to  marry  — 
of  the  Japanese  surgeon-in-chief,  or  Marshal 
Oyama,  he  insists  with  a  grimace.  I  suggest  the 
French  Ambassador,  or  a  cable  to  Zakharoff  in 
Petersburg.  And  then  what  about  the  religious 
service?  How  will  they  manage  that?  Lyov 
being  orthodox  and  la  Contessa  officially  Romanist 
since  her  Italian  marriage,  there  are  difficulties 
without  end.  It  is  not  possible  to  arrange  a  mar- 
riage until  the  war  has  ended,  and  I  do  not  think 
that  Sir  John  will  permit  his  beautiful  niece  to 


THE  FOREIGNER  KWANNON       183 

introduce  herself  to  the  affairs  of  the  imprisoned 
enemies  of  his  ally  during  this  war. 

Poor  Lyov !  What  an  eligible  part i  you  were  in 
Rome !  And  now  what  a  detrimental !  what  a  sad 
mesalliance  for  a  young  and  beautiful  woman  to 
marry  you  !  to  marry  a  Russian  !  I  dare  say,  Lord 
Salisbury,  if  he  were  alive,  would  lump  us  in  as  one 
of  "the  dying  nations"  now. 


CHAPTER  XX 

IN  KIKU  TIME 

Monday,  November  28th. 

T  HAD  word  from  the  Contessa  that  she  had  re- 
•*•  turned  to  Tokyo  and  had  remained  there, 

while  Madame  H had  gone  north  to  visit  more 

hospitals.  She  had  informed  her  uncle  of  meeting 
old  friends,  and  has  made  him  wish  to  do  a  tour 
of  the  Inland  Sea  also.  Then  the  artful  minx 
writes  fully  how  she  has  met  at  Legation  dinners 
the  Minister  of  War,  the  Minister  of  Foreign 
Affairs,  the  famous  chief  of  the  general  staff, 
etc.,  and  how  she  has  told  them  of  the  admirable 
arrangements  she  saw  at  Hiroshima  and  Matsu- 
yama.  "I  quite  delivered  myself  of  a  monologue 
on  Matsuyama  to  the  War  Minister,"  she  wrote, 
"and  he  agreed  with  me  in  my  praises  of  the  chief- 
surgeon,  and  could  believe  that  his  Russian 
patients  grew  fond  of  him.  He  was  pleased,  too, 
that  the  commandant  has  shown  you  such  great 
kindness  and  consideration  in  your  trying  position, 
and  he  praises  him  to  the  skies." 

I  chuckled  to  myself,  for  the  local  military,  of 
course,  read  this  long  before  I  did.  When  I  took 
it  to  show  to  Vladimir,  he  shouted  in  his  old 

184 


IN  KIKU  TIME  185 

joyous  way:  "Oh!  this  is  rippin',  as  my  English 
kinsfolk  say.  Trust  the  Contessa  to  manage  the 
whole  affair  now,  Sophia.  You  may  sit  back  and 
fold  your  hands;  in  other  words,  devote  yourself 
to  the  affairs  of  your  own  heart — to  your  husband 
in  the  hand,  while  the  Contessa  cages  hers,  who  is 
still  in  the  bush!  What  a  loss  to  diplomacy  that 
woman  is!" 

I  had  signs  enough  that  the  Contessa's  messages 
from  Tokyo  were  read  and  approved  by  our 
guardians,  and  were  doing  good  work  for  us  all. 
The  surgeons  smiled  in  greeting,  even  the  Prus- 
sianised commandant  reined  up  beside  my  humble 
jinrikisha  in  the  street,  to  pass  the  compliments  of 
the  day,  and  ask  if  my  "Herr  Colonel"  was  im- 
proving !  Everything  has  seemed  to  go  on  so  well 
and  so  smoothly.  Vladimir  has  improved,  and  his 
spirits  are  so  gay  and  the  weather  so  glorious,  so 
like  our  warm  Roman  autumn,  that  once  or  twice 
I  have  really  asked  myself  if  I  had  anything  in 
the  world  to  complain  of. 

Under  my  skilful  massage,  Lyov's  shattered 
arms  and  knee  have  begun  to  feel  a  little  life  again. 
He  begins  to  move,  to  bend  and  use  them.  Picture 
post  cards  come  to  him  in  showers.  There  is  her 
big  English  handwriting  on  one  side,  and  only  her 
initials  on  the  other;  but  that  seems  enough. 
Then  she  has  written  me :  "I  have  definitely  broken 
with  Rome  and  begun  Greek.  Baptism  soon." 


186         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

Of  course  we  understand,  but  however  will  they 
manage  an  orthodox  marriage  even  then !  And 
will  Ah  Shing  or  Ah  Tom  provide  the  trousseau  for 
a  woman  whom  Doucet  has  delighted  to  dress  for 
these  years?  And  Lyov,  whose  whole  wardrobe  is 
a  Red  Cross  kimono — what  will  he  do? 

The  spice  of  chrysanthemums  is  always  in  the 
air,  and  every  day  I  take  an  armful  to  the  bar- 
racks with  me.  I  make  Japanese  floral  arrange- 
ments, with  Vladimir,  Grievsky,  and  all  the  critics 
suggesting;  and  the  little  Red  Cross  sisters,  the 
attendants,  even  the  coolies,  are  eager  to  pose  the 
stately  flowers  in  ideal,  naturalistic  arrangements. 
The  dullest-looking  Cossack  wakes  a  little  to  the 
beauty  of  flowers,  and  Lyov  and  Akimoff ,  who  have 
most  soul,  are  becoming  apt  pupils  of  the  old 
teacher  of  flower  arrangement  who  instructs  us 
twice  a  week. 

"Ach  Gott!"  said  Grievsky,  striking  his  fore- 
head with  despair.  "To  think  of  these  monkeys 
knowing,  inventing,  evolving  this  finest  of  all  fine 
arts,  and  poor  old  Europe  never  dreaming  of  any 
such  things !  Why,  Paris  knows  no  more  about 
bouquet-making  now  than  it  did  in  Caesar's  day; 
and  yet  these  people  have  three  wholly  distinct 
and  rival  schools,  each  with  thirty  conventional, 
well-ordered,  well-known  ways  of  arranging  each 
flower!  Ah!  What  can  we  teach  the  Japanese? 
It  is  plain  that  I,  that  we,  cannot  teach  them  the 


IN  KIKU  TIME  187 

art  of  war.  And  then  they  know  all  these  other 
things  beside!  These  arts  are  so  fine,  so  refined, 
that  the  best  of  us — only  us  few — can  barely  com- 
prehend !  And  think  of  our  coolies,  our  peasants, 
the  Russian  mujiks  spending  an  hour  to  pose 
three  little  yellow  chrysanthemums  in  a  fragile 
bamboo  cup  hanging  on  the  wall!  Achl  Achl  Let 
us  not  think  of  it.  There  are  no  masters  of  flower 
arrangement  in  our  villages,  nor  yet  in  the  pro- 
vincial capitals.  My  head  goes  all  sdkesama  [up- 
side down]  when  I  try  to  think  out  some  of  these 
things;  racial  traits,  racial  conundrums  they  are. 
They  are  too  much  for  me.  Oh!  Damn  Japan! 
I  cannot  understand  it  at  all.  Damn  that  Ameri- 
can Commodore  Perry  who  opened  it  all  out." 

And  then  Lyov :  "Osip,  I  shall  beat  you,  if  you 
do  not  step  more  carefully.  Every  time  you  come 
in,  you  jar  my  flowers;  and  if  you  make  them  fall 
down  with  your  galloping  hoofs,  I  shall  ask  the 
Japanese  to  torture  you."  And  Osip  grins  and 
lurches  off  on  tiptoe,  not  sure  whether  his  master 
is  in  earnest  or  in  delirium. 

The  surgeons  told  us  of  an  autumn  salad  of 
yellow  chrysanthemum  petals,  which  will  secure 
long  life,  as  the  kiku  is  a  longevity  symbol. 

Andrew  Y ,  grand  gourmet  that  lie  is,  pricked 

up  his  ears  at  this  and  went  headlong  to  the  exe- 
cution of  such  a  novelty.  He  served  a  kiku  salad 
the  next  day,  a  loose  heap  of  golden  petals,  shining 


188          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

with  oil,  salted,  and  just  touched  with  a  vinegar 
flavour,  which  went  well  with  its  natural  spiciness. 
A  portion  was  waiting  when  I  arrived.  "I  present 
you  with  ten  years  more  of  life,"  said  Andrew, 
bowing  as  he  offered  it,  "for  the  Japanese  say  that 
any  such  wholly  new  sensation  adds  ten  years  to 
one's  life." 

"Ten  years  of  Matsuyama?"  I  asked,  and  he 
made  frantic  byplay  to  toss  the  plate  through  the 
window. 

I  often  find  myself  wondering  how  this  life  will 
seem  to  me  in  perspective,  when  I  have  lived  some 
years  longer  and  can  then  look  back  upon  it.  It 
will  not  be  all  sad  retrospect,  I  am  sure.  My 
dearest  ones,  Vladimir,  and  Lyov,  whom  I  consider 
one  of  my  own  kin,  are  safe  with  me  here;  I  can 
look  after  them,  see  them,  and  do  for  them.  I  am 
sure  that  to-day  I  have  much  to  be  thankful  for. 
It  is  dull,  and  sometimes  irksome,  this  life  at 
Matsuyama,  but  how  easily  it  could  be  worse. 
How  would  it  be  with  little  Madame  Takasu 
faring  forth  across  all  Siberia  to  find  her  wounded 
husband  in  a  Russian  hospital?  Would  that  be 
possible  for  her  ?  I  think  not ;  and  I  should  protest 
with  horror  at  the  idea  of  her,  alone  or  with  a 
maid,  going  straight  into  the  heart  of  the  enemy's 
country,  as  I  have  done.  Could  she  live  as  safely 
and  comfortably  in  any  little  Russian  or  Siberian 
town,  as  I  live  here?  Would  she  find  these,  per- 


IN  KIKU  TIME  189 

fectly  clean,  hard,  white  streets  and  country 
roads?  these  flower-peddlers  and  poetry-makers 
watching  the  moon  rise  over  Siberian  hills?  Could 
she  go  safely  about  the  streets  alone  all  day  and 
after  sunset,  as  I  go,  and  never  meet  anything  but 
courtesy,  kindness,  and  politeness  from  men, 
women,  and  children? 


CHAPTER  XXI 
A  HAPPY  NEW  YEAR— FOR  JAPAN 

Sunday,  December  25th. 

Russian  Christmas  and  the  English 
Twelfth  Night  were  to  fall  in  the  same  week 
with  the  prolonged  Japanese  New  Year  festivities. 
My  little  household  indulged  in  all  the  delightful 
Japanese  symbolic  decorations;  and  my  doorway 
had  its  conventional  pine,  bamboo,  and  plum 
branches,  bound  with  the  twisted  shimenawa,  or 
sacred  straw  rope,  to  secure  good  luck  and  long 
life,  and  to  avert  evil.  The  servants  had  red  rice 
and  ceremonial  dumplings,  and  each  an  extra 
month's  wages  and  a  new  kimono,  and  it  was  a 
distinct  pleasure  to  give  to  these  who  received  it 
with  such  graceful  courtesy. 

My  whole  house  was  fragrant  with  the  exquisite 
perfume  of  dwarf  plum  trees — veteran  trees  with 
mossy,  lichen-covered  trunks,  and  growing  only  a 
half-metre  high.  The  cream-white  flowers  exhaled 
a  fragrance  that  strangely  touched  and  thrilled 
me.  Was  it  memory,  or  was  it  the  strange,  in- 
describable charm  of  this  most  beloved  of  all  Japa- 
nese tree  blossoms?  Sometimes,  as  the  odour 
190 


A  HAPPY  NEW  YEAR—  FOR  JAPAN    191 

came  to  me,  I  seemed  struggling  from  a  dream. 
It  was  the  Japan  of  long  ago.  It  was  Tokyo 
again,  and  I  was  in  my  drawing-room  in  the  little 
No.  2  house,  and  saw  the  row  of  tiny  plum  trees, 
white  ones  and  rose-pink  ones,  with  down-fall- 
ing blossoms,  against  the  background  of  gold 
screens.  The  plum  trees  and  the  gold  screens  I 
have  again,  but  in  another,  a  changed  Japan. 


We  have  really  had  a  little  of  holiday  spirit  at 
the  barracks,  where  Andrew  Y  -  ,  as  head  cook, 
has  planned  a  Christmas  feast.  It  is  part  of  the 
humour  of  this  situation  that  Andrew  Y  -  , 
once  of  the  corps  of  pages  with  Vladimir,  hussar 
officer  in  Alexander  Nicholaivitch's  time,  should 
have  charge  of  the  hospital  kitchens!  That 
flaneur  of  the  boulevards,  that  pink  and  pet  of  the 
Guards,  now  studies  over  menus  and  supplies, 
bringing  the  daily  ration  of  officers  and  soldiers 
to  the  military  requirements  of  so  many  ounces  of 
this  and  that,  and  to  the  medical  requirements  of 
so  much  carbon,  nitrogen,  and  proteids  —  so  much 
starch  and  sugar,  so  much  solid  and  so  much  liquid 
food.  He  puts  his  whole  mind  on  it  and  works 
hard,  and  this  stimulus  of  an  interest  has  done 
him  good.  He  walks  now  with  difficulty,  but  he 
can  get  about,  and  he  is  full  of  projects  for  keep- 
ing the  barracks  warmer;  for,  although  in  sunny 


192         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

December  we  have  blooming  hedges  and  rose- 
bushes, and  golden-fruited  persimmon  trees  have 
but  given  way  to  golden-fruited  orange  trees, 
those  thin  wooden  barracks  are  draughty  and  bit- 
terly cold.  It  is  rather  a  joke  on  us  Russians  to 
suffer  with  cold  among  the  orange  groves  of 
Shikoku. 


Tuesday,  January  3rd. 

All  day  Sunday,  the  Japanese  new-style,  official 
New  Year's  day,  Matsuyama  was  in  gala  array, 
and  I  drove  around  the  circle  of  the  city  in  the 
morning  to  see  the  street  decorations.  The  main 
street  was  a  bower  of  bamboos  and  pines.  All 
signs  of  trade  were  put  away  for  the  day,  the 
little  floor  counters  and  show  cases  moved  back; 
red  blankets  or  precious  old  Sakai  rugs  spread  on 
the  floor,  and  the  best  screens  opened  out  against 
the  walls.  Oh!  that  those  gold-leaf  screens  had 
been  for  sale  !  But  nothing  was  for  sale  that  day. 
All  stocks  and  commodities  were  pushed  out  of 
sight,  and  silk-clad  companies  sat  in  these  golden 
bays,  playing  sober  games  of  "go,"  or  enjoying 
tea  and  ceremonial  cakes.  An  exquisite  flower 
arrangement  was  always  set  on  a  low  stand  before 
the  screens,  with  a  bowl  or  plaque  for  visitors' 
cards  and  souvenirs.  Always  there  was  a  dwarf 


A  HAPPY  NEW  YEAR— FOR  JAPAN    193 

plum  tree,  with  its  fragrant  cream-white  or  rose- 
coloured  blossoms.  Few  people  moved  in  the 
streets,  save  the  rustling,  silk-clad  visitors,  and 
girls  and  children,  gay  in  scarlet  and  brilliantly- 
painted  crapes,  playing  their  New  Year's  game  of 
battledore  and  shuttlecock. 

"Port  Arthur  is  still  ours,  ours !  1905  has 
come,  and  Kwangtung  is  still  Russian  territory !" 
said  Grievsky.  "It  still  affords  a  safe  shelter  to 
our  brave  fleet.  You  see !  I  told  you  so.  A  New 
Year  has  begun,  and  our  flag  is  there,  as  it  was 
last  year,  will  be  next  year,  and  for  all  the  years 
forever  to  come.  Ah !  I  drink  to  our  brave  army ! 
May  the  fleet,  that  fleet !  la  ftotte  peureuse! — come 
here — to  Matsuyama !  and  rest  in  peace  and  quiet ! 
Dame!  but  it  would  give  me  no  heartbreaks  to 
have  Togo  bag  the  whole  lot,  boats  and  boots,  and 
bring  them  here — here,  where  there  are  men — men 
who  want  only  the  chance  to  fight  for  Russia. 
And  they  lie  at  anchor,  under  the  guns  of  the 
forts !  Ah!  if  I  had  one  battery  there!  For  just 
one  hour !  They  would  make  a  sortie  then.  They 
would  move  from  their  anchorage  when  I  placed 
the  sights.  They  could  choose  between  my  guns 
and  Togo's  guns.  What  is  our  navy  for?  What 
has  Russia  to  show  for  the  roubles  she  has  spent 
for  sea  power?  A  flock  of  boats  cowering  in  a 
land-locked  harbour;  a  club  full  of  champagne 
officers  enjoying  themselves  on  shore!  Ah!  let  me 


194         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

ever  meet  one  of  them  in  Petersburg !  I  will  pull 
his  nose.  I  will  challenge." 

On  Monday,  I  went  early  to  the  barracks  to 
help  in  the  operating  room  as  relief  nurse,  and, 
on  my  way  home  for  my  tiffin,  a  fusillade  came 
from  the  skies,  the  pom!  pom!  pop!  of  day  fire- 
works overhead.  More  celebration  of  the  New 
Year,  I  thought.  The  coolie  stopped,  turned  a 
dazed  face  around  to  me,  and  said,  grinning :  "Ah ! 
Riojinko!  Riojmkol"  It  was  as  if  a  shot  had 
struck  me.  I  felt  collapsing  with  terror  and 
fright.  Instantly,  people  ran  from  their  houses, 
and  ran  from  the  side  streets  to  the  broad  road, 
recognising  the  prearranged  signal  that  an- 
nounced the  fall  of  Port  Arthur.  They  cried: 
"Banzai!"  and  ran  to  see  the  bulletin  boards  at  the 
newspaper  offices  in  the  main  street. 

I  met  Madame  Takasu,  and  she  stopped  her 
Jcuruma  and  stepped  down  to  speak  to  me.  Dear 
little  woman !  Even  in  that  hour  of  her  great  re- 
joicing, she  could  feel  for  me.  She  put  both  her 
hands  on  mine,  as  she  leaned  over,  the  long  cere- 
monial sleeves  of  her  heliotrope  crape  coat  sweeping 
my  wheels  recklessly:  "It  is  your  sorrow,  I  fear. 
Yes,  it  is  true.  Riojinko  has  fallen  down  to  Gen- 
eral Nogi.  It  was  wise,  we  think,  in  General  Stoes- 
sel  to  save  lives  and  surrender.  It  could  only  have 
been  for  a  few  more  days,  at  any  rate — and  many, 
many  more  deaths.  It  is  very  hard  for  you,  and 


A  HAPPY  NEW  YEAR— FOR  JAPAN    195 

for  the  Colonel  san,  I  know.  But,  perhaps,  it 
brings  nearer  that  peace,  and  that  home  of  yours. 
It  is  ordered  that  nothing  be  said  at  the  hospital 
to-day.  There  will  not  be  a  Banzai  to-night.  It 
is  not  officially  announced  from  Tokyo  yet.  I  am 
so  sorry  to  hurt  you  by  being  so  happy ;  but  now, 
no  more  of  our  lyo  soldiers  shall  die  over  there 
with  General  Nogi's  sons.  Port  Arthur  is  restored 
to  us." 


CHAPTER  XXII 
ALL  IS  LOST— EVEN  HONOUR 

Thursday,  January  5th. 

"VTEVER  had  I  entered  the  dreary  hospital 
•^•^  gates  with  such  a  heavy  heart.  I  stopped 
to  talk  about  nothing  to  Madame  Takasu,  who 
looked  sympathy  from  her  eyes,  to  ask  Nesan 
about  Lyov's  gruel,  and  to  ask  the  American  sister 
about  her  home  for  factory  girls,  which  she  has 
just  opened.  All  the  delay  did  not  pick  up  my 
spirits,  as  I  dragged  my  way  towards  Vladimir, 
dreading  the  gloom  that  I  should  find  there.  How 
hard  my  life  seemed !  Vladimir  and  I  tied  to  this 
rigid  routine  of  life  here  in  these  unlovely  sur- 
roundings, and  our  villa  at  Rome  closed,  echoing, 
empty !  Sunshine  and  flowers  on  the  terraces,  and 
all  our  world  driving  past.  All  our  world  looking 
up  at  our  walls  and  perhaps  passing  a  question  or 
remark  about  us ;  wondering  where  we  are  this 
winter ;  laughing  at  Russia's  reverses. 

Shall  we  ever  really  live  again  with  our  chosen 
friends  around  us,  and  come  and  go,  hear  music, 
read  new  books,  and  enjoy  life's  luxuries? 
196 


ALL  IS  LOST— EVEN  HONOUR      197 

Think  of  all  that  full,  rich  life  in  Rome !  What 
a  keen  and  lively  pleasure  it  would  be  to  dine  again 
at  that  palace  in  Funari,  or  at  Pamfili  Doria,  to 
sit  under  the  Romano  ceiling,  and  watch  the  Cel- 
lini gilt  flagons  and  epergnes  on  the  table!  I  am 
homesick  in  these  holidays.  Oh!  so  homesick  for 
my  home,  my  Rome. 

They  were  not  concerned  about  the  fusillade  of 
day  fireworks  in  Vladimir's  ward.  They  were  not 
downcast,  but  in  full,  defiant,  fighting  mood. 

"Pouf !  Bah!  Madame,  you  hear  the  bombs? 
Well,  do  not  be  disturbed,"  said  AkimofF.  "Believe 
it  when  you  see  the  prisoners,  when  Kondrachenko 
comes  and  tells  us  himself.  When  Port  Arthur 
does  fall,  there  will  be  no  surrenders,  there  will 
be  no  prisoners  to  come  here.  They  will  all  be 
dead — dead  every  man  of  them.  Not  one  living 
Russian  will  be  left  there  to  tell.  The  Czar  has 
charged  them.  It  is  honour.  As  well  surrender  the 
Imperial  regalia  or  the  Iberian  Virgin  of  Moscow. 
We  have  heard  these  day  fireworks  before.  Come, 
let  us  practise  our  Mass  again." 

They  convinced  me,  weathercock  that  I  am, 
just  as  Madame  Takasu  and  the  rejoicing  crowds 
in  the  streets  had  convinced  me.  I  saw  that  it  was 
all  the  exuberance  of  the  Japanese  New  Year's 
spirit;  that  these  men,  in  their  heavy  silk  hakama 
and  haori,  rustling  around  to  pay  their  New  Year's 
visits,  had  had  too  much  sake,  and  could  believe 


198          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

anything ;  that  the  little  butterflies  of  children,  in 
their  gay  crape  gowns,  and  the  young  girls  in 
exquisite  crape  kimonos,  playing  a  gentle  battle- 
dore and  shuttlecock  bareheaded  in  the  streets, 
said  "Banzai!"  as  regularly  as  "Omedeto!"  It  was 
all  a  greeting  of  the  season,  and  we  had  a  cheery 
afternoon  with  our  music. 

There  were  more  day  fireworks  the  next  morn- 
ing, and  the  gardener  brought  me  a  little  pink 
gogai  that  announced  the  birth  of  a  third  son 
to  the  Crown  Prince  of  Japan.  Three  sons  to 
insure  this  succession!  What  luck!  Their  own 
Gods  surely  love  the  Japanese.  Three  infant 
princes  already,  and  not  a  useless  girl-baby  yet ! 
And  look  at  Russia  with  a  nursery  full  of  little 
girls,  and  the  Czarevitch  but  a  feeble  infant! 
"Three  good  lucks !"  said  Kinsan,  the  little  amah. 
"One  piece  good  luck — New  Years ;  Two  piece 
good  luck — Port  Arthur ;  Three  piece  good  luck — 
the  baby !  Oh  Banzai!"  she  chirruped  with  a  ris- 
ing inflection,  happy  from  her  holiday  hairdress  to 
her  new  Jciri  clogs. 

When  the  crossed  flags  were  hung  out  at  head- 
quarters gates  and  at  all  the  temples;  when  the 
red-rayed  service  flag  flew  triumphant  from  the 
tallest  tower  of  the  chateau,  and  a  great  bulletin 
was  put  out  at  headquarters,  it  was  final.  Port 
Arthur  had  surrendered!  The  treaty  was  signed 
at  eight  o'clock  that  night,  just  as  the  little  prince 


ALL  IS  LOST— EVEN  HONOUR      199 

was  born.  Will  they  call  him  Arthur,  I  wonder? 
They  should. 

The  coterie  in  the  hospital  contradict  all  the 
news  I  bring,  and  doggedly  maintain  that  it  is 
impossible  to  reduce  that  fortress,  all  the  forty 
fortresses  that  constitute  Port  Arthur.  Yet  it 
has  surrendered ;  not  to  an  army  furiously  storm- 
ing and  breaking  through  the  defences,  seizing 
the  commands  at  their  posts  and  the  generals  in 
the  council  chamber.  It  was  not  at  any  such  last, 
desperate  moment,  that  Stoessel  betrayed  his  Czar 
and  all  Russia,  and  yielded  up  the  fortress.  The 
Japanese  did  not  come  to  Stoessel.  No.  Stoessel 
sent  the  offer,  and  Stoessel  and  his  staff  rode  to 
the  Japanese  headquarters  the  next  day,  and 
signed  the  humiliating  capitulation.  Who  rode 
with  that  traitor  that  he  did  not  shoot  him  in  the 
back?  And  Stoessel  gave  his  horse  to  General 
Nogi !  Theatricals — heroics.  It  was  not  his  horse 
to  give.  He  had  surrendered  the  fortress  and  all 
it  contained.  Why  not  have  magnanimously  made 
Nogi  the  personal  present  of  a  cannon,  or  a  battle- 
ship? Bah! 

With  Port  Arthur  lost,  why  should  the  war  go 
on?  Let  us  go  back  to  Europe.  Let  the  Japa- 
nese have  Manchuria.  It  may  prove  their  undoing 
as  it  has  been  ours. 

In  every  mind  there  is  but  one  question.  Why? 
Why?  Why  did  they  surrender,  when  there  were 


200         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

food  and  clothing,  guns  and  ammunition  for  a 
year,  and  more  than  fifty  thousand  men? 

The  lunatics  are  entirely  insane,  madmen  now. 
This  terrible  news  has  been  the  last  shock  for  tot- 
tering reason,  and  the  surgeons  have  put  them  off 
by  themselves,  under  guard.  It  was  an  unspeak- 
able relief  when  they  were  gone  from  the  ward, 
and  Vladimir  really  gained.  It  must  be  a  sorry 
night's  rest  indeed,  when  one  is  separated  from  a 
pair  of  lunatics  by  only  a  light  curtain.  The 
Japanese,  who  do  not  sleep  or  live  with  locked 
doors,  cannot  know  how  we  Europeans  feel.  I 
never  used  to  sleep  soundly  in  the  flimsy  Japanese 
houses  those  summers  at  Hakone.  I  never  got 
used  to  being  at  the  mercy  of  the  sliding  panel. 
This  life  without  privacy  is  different  from  real 
living.  We  Europeans  must  have  locks  and  bolts, 
real  doors  on  hinges.  Screens  and  sliding  par- 
titions and  paper  walls  give  one  too  temporary, 
too  insecure  a  feeling.  They  say  it  is  because  of 
our  want  of  self-control,  that  we  foreigners  want 
to  hide  and  lock.  No  wonder  the  Japanese  have 
had  to  cultivate  stoicism,  self-control,  and  the 
immovable,  unalterable  countenance,  to  put  the 
locks  and  bolts  upon  their  faces  and  their  own 
inner  selves. 

The  last  word  is,  that  the  Kaiser  has  decorated 
the  two  generals !  Stoessel  and  Nogi.  "The  two 
heroes  of  Port  Arthur !"  Nogi,  yes,  perhaps ;  but 


ALL  IS  LOST— EVEN  HONOUR      201 

Stoessel?  No!  No!  Were  he  a  hero,  he  would 
have  died  in  the  fort's  defence.  What  a  thing  for 
that  madman  of  Europe  to  do !  As  indecent  as  all 
his  other  exploits — rushing  in  where  decency  would 
hold  back.  Could  he  not  wait,  in  common  courtesy, 
for  Stoessel's  own  sovereign  to  bestow  the  first 
reward — if  Stoessel  should  even  merit  it? 


CHAPTER  XXIII 
"GREAT  SOVEREIGN,  FORGIVE!" 

Thursday,  January  12th. 

STOESSEL  and  his  inglorious  company  have 
reached  Nagasaki,  to  take  the  Messagerie 
steamer  for  Marseilles,  and  my  obstinate  Russians 
now  abandon  their  pose  and  accept  the  sad  truth. 
Port  Arthur  has  fallen.  The  Russian  flag  has 
been  drawn  down  from  the  strongest  fortress  in 
the  world — the  Cronstadt,  the  Ehrenbreitstein,  the 
Gibraltar  of  the  East.  Esper  is  full  of  scorn  at 
the  details  of  Stoessel's  theatricals  when  he  reached 
Nagasaki  and  took  farewell  of  his  confreres  for — 
three  days !  He  addressed  them,  after  the  manner 
of  Napoleon  at  Fontainebleau ;  embraced  them, 
kissed  them,  and  they  all  wept  maudlin,  senile 
tears  together — to  the  amazement  of  the  Japa- 
nese, who  do  not  at  all  understand  any  such 
demonstrations  and  parades  of  emotion.  Then 
Stoessel  went  down  the  gangway  to  his  launch, 
and  the  gray-beards  wept ;  and  he  went  over  to 
Inasa  and  occupied  a  house  and  garden,  and  they 
all  came  following  after  and  occupied  other  houses 
and  gardens.  The  Nagasaki  municipality  voted 

302 


"GREAT  SOVEREIGN,  FORGIVE !"   203 

a  sum  of  money  for  entertaining  these  foreign 
guests,  and — how  the  God  of  War  must  laugh ! 
The  generals  and  the  admiral  will  make  their 
retreat  at  the  old  chateau  of  Nagoya  until  the 
end  of  the  war.  The  lesser  horios  will  be  scat- 
tered the  length  of  Japan,  in  all  the  old  castle 
towns,  where  there  are  garrisons  to  guard  them. 
We  seem  a  small  company  here — 50  officers 
and  1300  of  the  rank  and  file — in  view  of 
the  army  that  is  coming.  And  the  Viceroy  said, 
before  the  war  began,  that  his  first  move  would  be 
to  land  an  army  in  Japan.  The  army  is  landing, 
but  the  Viceroy  of  the  two-metre  belt  is  not  land- 
ing with  it. 

Up  to  this  time,  there  have  been  only  three  thou- 
sand prisoners  in  all  Japan.  Now,  from  Port 
Arthur  comes  the  incredible  number  of  42,421 
prisoners !  At  least,  that  is  the  number  of  Rus- 
sians the  Japanese  say  surrendered  and  were 
counted.  It  is  staggering  to  think  of.  One  only 
recalls  Bazaine's  army  at  Metz.  A  surrender  that 
fitly  matches  this  one.  The  numbers  ring  in  my 
ears  continually  and  dance  in  figures  before  my 
eyes.  Grievsky  snorts  with  wrath,  calls  the  Japa- 
nese figures  exaggeration  and  boasting,  something 
to  please  the  national  megalomania ;  but  he  and 
Esper,  for  all  that,  run  their  finger  down  the 
printed  lists  in  the  Kobe  paper  and  wrathfully 
comment  and  argue.  Stoessel  sent  word  out  again 


204          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

and  again,  at  the  last,  that  they  were  "but  a 
handful" ;  and  the  Japanese  believed  there  were 
but  6,000  effective  soldiers  for  all  the  forts,  since 
escaping  torpedo  boats  had  also  given  that  word 
at  Chefoo.  All  the  world,  as  well  as  the  Czar,  had 
talked  about  a  mere  'handful.'  The  Japanese 
were  lost  in  admiration  that  these  few  thousand 
men  could  continue  to  withstand  fatigue,  exhaus- 
tion, and  sleeplessness.  The  Japanese  knew  that 
there  must  be  stores  of  provisions  and  ammunition 
remaining,  because  such  things  were  rushed  in  by 
trainloads  for  months  and  months ;  but  they  knew 
also  that  the  most  frantic  efforts  were  made  at 
Shanghai  in  August,  to  get  in  medical  supplies — 
anaesthetics,  antiseptics,  and  bandages,  which  alone 
had  been  forgotten  in  the  preparations  for  a  long 
siege.  There  were  champagne  and  vodka  to  last 
three  years.  Chloroform  and  bandages?  Nlet! 
Niet! 

"Oh !  this  cursed  prearrangement !"  growled 
Grievsky,  as  he  thrashed  the  side  of  his  chair  with 
the  Kobe  newspaper.  "But  see  how  they  repelled 
the  officiousness  of  their  ally.  Read  that!  I  am 
glad  the  English  got  the  rebuff.  Bravo!  for  the 
Japanese !  Yes,  I — I — /  say  Bravo !  for  the  Japa- 
nese! Read  that,  and  see  how  those  English  at 
Wei-Hai-Wei  loaded  a  ship  with  medicines  and 
hospital  supplies,  and  rushed  over  to  Dalny  as 
soon  as  they  heard  of  Stoessel's  surrender.  And 


"GREAT  SOVEREIGN,  FORGIVE!"   205 

the  Japanese  said:  'Go  away.  You  cannot  come 
in  here.  We  don't  want  you.  We  have  medicines 
and  supplies  and  stores  of  our  own,  all  ready  and 
waiting,  to  take  in  to  the  Port  Arthur  hospitals. 
It  has  all  been  prearranged.'  Prearranged !  Ah ! 
The  devil  himself  must  put  these  ideas  into  their 
yellow  heads  so  long  beforehand.  Prearranged! 
If  the  snub  to  the  British  had  been  prearranged, 
I  could  love  them.  Yes,  love  my  enemy  for  slap- 
ping the  British  face.  It  was  not  humanity  that 
took  those  English  over  with  their  accursed  hospi- 
tal ship.  No,  they  wanted  to  get  in  there  and  see 
Port  Arthur  in  its  disorder;  to  gloat  over  the 
Russians  in  their  disaster.  They  sneaked  back 
to  Chefoo,  escorted  by  a  torpedo  boat,  and  they 
saw — probably  the  Golden  Hill,  through  their 
binocles !  Good !" 

Vladimir  and  Grievsky,  and  the  older  officers, 
who  knew  the  Franco-Prussian  war  in  all  its  de- 
tails, in  their  cadet  days,  and  also  Plevna,  are 
greatly  concerned  about  these  surrendered  pris- 
oners at  Port  Arthur.  The  Japanese  cannot  care 
for  so  many  Europeans  here  in  Japan,  they  say. 
It  will  be  impossible  to  get  foreign  food  for  this 
army.  The  Russian  prisoners  now  outnumber  all 
the  Europeans  in  all  the  treaty  ports  of  Japan, 
put  together ;  and  the  markets  are  strained  as  it  is. 
If  Germany  could  not  decently  care  for  the  French 
prisoners  in  1870,  how  are  the  Japanese  going 


206         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

to  care  for  these  thousands  of  Russian  prisoners? 
If,  in  the  heart  of  Europe,  the  prisoners  of  war 
died  of  hunger  and  cold,  and  epidemics  of  smallpox 
and  typhoid,  at  every  place  of  internment  in 
Germany,  what  must  we  look  forward  to  here? 

The  Japanese  had  prearranged  everything. 
Even  the  champagne  for  the  treaty  negotiators 
went  ashore  with  the  first  landing-party  in  May — 
perhaps,  too,  the  pair  of  chickens  that  gallant, 
old  Nogi  sent  first-off  to  the  supposedly  starving 
Stoessel,  only  to  have  his  messenger  deafened  with 
the  crowing  of  Madame  Stoessel's  great  flock  of 
fowls  raised  for  sale  in  the  local  market.  The 
quarantine  station  in  the  straits  of  Shimonoseki 
was  ordered  enlarged  at  the  instant  the  capitula- 
tion was  signed.  All,  all  was  prearranged. 

Lists  of  the  spoils  of  war  are  published  day  by 
day,  and  we  are  the  more  dumfounded.  How 
dare  that  Stoessel  surrender  our  fortress?  How 
could  any  man  take  to  Chefoo  for  him,  and  tele- 
graph to  Europe,  those  whimpering  messages  that 
all  were  suffering  hunger  and  blood-poisoning,  and 
that  only  4,000  men  were  effective  for  military 
service  ? 

Esper  and  Loris,  who  knew  Port  Arthur  in  July, 
are  consumed  with  a  fury  that  is  not  good  for 
either  of  them.  It  is  hard  to  beat  out  and  wear 
out  such  a  rage,  and  passion,  in  the  restraint  and 
bounds  of  a  prisoner's  narrow  quarters.  "Ah!  if 


"GREAT  SOVEREIGN,  FORGIVE !"    207 

I  could  get  away.  Go  away,  and  walk  versts  and 
versts  over  the  country  alone,  and  curse  and  scream 
in  the  forest  by  myself,  I  could  stand  this  better. 
But  to  be  in  paper  walls,  in  sound  of  a  sentry,  in 
sight  of  people,  other  men,  my  enemies,  and  to 
maintain  decent  calmness  and  self-control!  It  is 
too  much." 

The  Japanese  official  reports  tabulate  things 
with  great  minuteness.  Every  man,  every  ton  of 
food,  each  piece  of  ammunition  and  piece  of  cloth- 
ing, every  gun,  wagon,  electric  light  and  intrench- 
ing tool,  is  put  down  in  plain  figures.  Every  ship, 
regiment,  and  battery  is  given  by  name,  with  the 
numbers  of  officers  and  men  surrendering ;  so  many 
of  this  Siberian  Rifles  Regiment,  so  many  of  that ; 
so  many  of  Mixed  Regiments,  of  Kwangtung  Artil- 
lery, of  gendarmes  and  Voluunteers.  Even  the 
17,000  men  in  hospitals  are  put  down  in  de- 
tail, and  I  read :  "5,625  scurvy  patients" ! 
Scurvy,  in  a  fortress  provisioned  for  two  years, 
without  lime  juice  or  onions !  Scurvy !  that  Stoessel 
mysteriously  called  "blood-poisoning"!  Twelve 
hundred  and  sixty-one  officers  have  surrendered ; 
or  rather,  Stoessel  has  surrendered  them.  And 
that  fine  old  samurai,  General  Nogi,  bade  them 
retain  their  swords.  There  was  Bushido  in  its 
finest  flowering !  It  is  solace  when  an  officer  has  to 
yield,  that  he  yields  to  one  worthy  of  honour.  I 
wish  Nogi  were  our  General !  Grievsky  holds  daily 


208         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

court-martials  and  delivers  fit  sentences  for 
Stoessel  on  earth,  and  provides  hot  fires  eternal, 
in  the  world  to  come ;  throwing  in  duels  and  insults 
here,  and  picturesque  arrangements  of  red  coals 
and  blue  flames  hereafter. 

Even  the  Japanese  despise  Stoessel  for  his  sur- 
render, and  smile  scorn  at  the  664  officers,  who 
have  taken  the  oath  and  will  return  to  Russia  on 
parole.  Stoessel  heads  the  list  of  these  cowards; 
and  his  tools,  Reiss  and  Fock,  also  go  with  him. 
Share  the  fate  of  the  men  who  fought  for  him  and 
under  him?  Not  Stoessel. 

And  then  that  nauseating  message  to  the  Czar: 
"Great  Sovereign,  forgive.  We  have  done  all  that 
was  humanly  possible.  Judge  us;  but  be  mer- 
ciful"! 

He  must  have  rehearsed  that  bit  of  rhodomon- 
tade,  ever  since  the  place  was  cut  off.  He  got  his 
own  Third  Division  sent  up  to  Haicheng,  and  he 
meant  to  follow  them,  but  they  cut  the  railway 
and  he  had  to  stay.  Smirnoff  was  the  real  com- 
mander of  the  fort,  and  he  would  never  have  sur- 
rendered. Loris  calls  him  a  fighter  of  the  old 
school — grim,  resolute,  a  good  match  for  Nogi. 
The  Japanese  think  that  Stoessel  should  commit 
suicide.  I  think  so  too. 

It  does  us  all  good  to  have  Grievsky  thunder 
and  storm  at  Stoessel.  While  he  was  grinding  his 
teeth  and  flinging  his  arms  to-day,  the  Japanese 


"GREAT  SOVEREIGN,  FORGIVE!"   209 

interpreter,  who  stood  blinking  through  his  spec- 
tacles at  this  exhibition  of  force  and  passion,  broke 
in:  "We  admire  you  that  you  think  so,  Colonel 
Grievsky.  We  do  not  admire  General  Stoessel, 
that  he  deserts  his  men  in  captivity,"  and  Grievsky 
fell  upon  the  astonished  little  man,  embraced  him, 
and  kissed  him  loudly  on  either  cheek.  The  shouts 
that  followed  were  welcome  relief  to  our  tense 
nerves. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 
"KINGS  IN  EXILE" 

Friday,  January  13th. 

'  •  ^HE  Contessa  was  baptised  a  member  of  the 
•*•  Orthodox  Church  last  week  in  Kioto.  That 
was  news  for  Lyov  that  roused  him  a  bit  from  the 
awful  depression  and  gloom  that  has  weighed 
upon  all  during  this  dreary,  cold  fortnight. 

To-day — unlucky  thirteenth  day,  by  the  new 
calendar,  in  the  midst  of  our  Russian  New  Year's 
rejoicings  by  another — the  first  of  the  Port 
Arthur  captives  are  to  arrive.  I  do  not  believe 
that,  in  their  wildest  dreams,  the  Japanese  ex- 
pected anything  like  this  wholesale  surrender  at 
Port  Arthur.  Only  Bazaine  at  Metz  is  any  inci- 
dent for  comparison,  and  the  dishonour  is  equal,  if 
our  numbers  are  short  of  the  French  army  handed 
over  by  a  feeble  commander.  Where  will  they  ever 
put  this  Port  Arthur  army?  How  guard  and 
feed?  They  have  enlarged  our  hospital,  ward  by 
ward.  Temples  have  been  leased,  and  now  they  are 
building  officers'  quarters  at  Oguri,  at  the  far  end 
of  town  beyond  the  railway  terminus.  Three 
thousand  captives  in  all  will  come  to  Matsuyama, 
210 


"KINGS  IN  EXILE" 

but  at  first  we  heard  that  3,000  sick  and  wounded 
were  coming  to  the  hospital  alone,  and  Andrew 

Y went  wild.  "I  cannot  feed  them.  I  cannot 

feed  them.  My  kitchen  will  not  boil  and  cook  for 
that  many  more,"  cried  the  ex-marshal  of  the  nobil- 
ity, present  chef  of  our  barracks.  "I  resign.  I 
must  retire.  I  cannot  cook  for  so  many.  It  is 
impossible,  impossible,"  he  said,  growing  as  excited 
over  his  cooking  pots  as  Grievsky  does  over 
Stoessel's  villainies. 

We  get  some  grim  laughter  out  of  the  situation, 
but  seriously,  we  do  not  see  how  the  Japanese  are 
going  to  provide  foreign  food,  even  plain  bread 
and  beef  for  all  these  additional  ones.  Our  mujiks 
are  big  eaters.  They  eat  much  bread.  They  want 
soup  and  cabbages,  and  such  strong  food.  They 
will  eat  Japan  out  in  a  month.  The  missionaries 
say  that  beef,  chickens,  potatoes,  milk,  eggs,  and 
flour  are  all  dearer  here  since  the  horios  came; 
although  everything  went  up  once  in  price,  the 
instant  the  war  began.  Shops  of  foreign  goods 
have  doubled  in  numbers  since  the  New  Year,  and 
all  Nagasaki,  which  has  been  in  depression  since  the 
loss  of  the  large  Russian  trade,  has  come  up  to 
Matsuyama  with  foreign  goods  and  curios  to  sell. 

Grievsky,  who  was  with  Skobeleff  at  Plevna,  and 
knows  what  happened  after  that  surrender,  says 
that  the  Japanese  cannot  possibly  care  for  these 
40,000  prisoners,  and  that  we  shall  all  suffer  for 


AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

it.  "It  will  be  rice  and  fish  for  the  whole  lot  of  us 
before  long,"  says  our  prophet  of  woes.  "The 
situation  will  soon  horrify  the  civilised  world. 
When  the  Germans  could  not  manage  the  problem 
in  1870,  and  our  own  Russian  army,  with  the 
sovereign  and  his  staff  at  hand,  could  not  do  well 
by  30,000  Turkish  prisoners  at  Plevna,  what  can 
these  people  do? 

"When  the  Turkish  surrendered  at  Plevna  they 
were  marched  out  to  the  open  fields  beyond  the 
town,  divided  into  three  herds  like  cattle,  and  sen- 
tries marched  around  them.  It  was  midwinter 
then,  also;  wet  snow  on  the  ground,  damp, 
cold,  miserable  Balkan  weather.  Fortunately, 
there's  no  snow  at  Port  Arthur,  they  say ;  dry 
cold  and  bright  sunshine, — a  climate  like 
Peking's. 

"At  Plevna,  our  own  Russian  soldiers  were  short 
of  winter  clothing  and  blankets,  and  were  glad  to 
get  into  the  town  and  the  shelter  of  Turkish 
houses  and  barracks.  Imagine,  then,  the  poor 
Turks  in  the  open  fields  in  December  without 
shelter  or  covering,  and  no  food  at  all,  for  three 
days  and  nights !  It  was  terrible ;  but  it  was  war. 
Hundreds  died  of  exposure  and  starvation;  for 
there  they  stood  or  lay  on  the  wet  snow — sick  and 
wounded  as  well.  Each  morning,  they  moved  the 
droves  to  fresh  pasture  ground,  in  lieu  of  clean- 
ing— and  picked  up  the  dead  and  helpless.  All 


"KINGS  IN  EXILE"  213 

the  dead  Turks  were  stripped  of  their  clothing, 
for  our  own  men  needed  it,  and  we  buried  them  in 
trenches  pele-mele.  It  was  terrible !  but  what 
could  be  done?  Skobeleff  was  off  on  other  work, 
and  the  others  were — not  zealous.  Finally,  they 
did  get  some  food  for  the  poor  creatures,  and 
enough  tents  for  the  sick.  It  was  twelve  days 
before  they  could  begin  to  march  them  in  herds  the 
twenty  miles  over  to  the  boats  on  the  Danube. 
Now,  let  us  see  the  Japanese  do  better. 

"Thank  God,  Kondrachenko  died  before  this 
came!"  cried  Grievsky  heart-brokenly.  "Ah! 
Kondrachenko,  my  dear  brother ;  not  you,  not  you ! 
The  others  should  have  died  first.  You  made  the 
fortress  strong.  You  would  have  held  it.  You 
would  never  have  surrendered.  When  you  died, 
the  fortress  died.  And  where  did  Kondrachenko 
die?  Not  in  a  headquarters  armchair.  Not  at 
the  club.  Not  at  the  supper  table,  champagne 
glass  in  hand.  He  died  in  the  casemate  of  his  own 
fort,  beside  his  own  guns,  crushed  by  an  infernal 
Japanese  shell.  His  officers  knew  then  that  the 
siege  was  done,  the  spirit  of  the  garrison,  the  soul 
of  resistance  gone.  It  was  only  for  the  others  to 
die  there  like  him — or  surrender.  And  to  sur- 
render was  so  much  easier — and  more  comfortable, 
of  course,  for  a  Stoessel." 


214         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

Saturday,  January  21st. 

After  we  had  worked  ourselves  up  to  the  last 
degree  of  sympathy  for  their  sufferings,  the  men 
from  Port  Arthur  arrived.  A  sad-faced,  woe- 
begone, broken-hearted  lot  of  sufferers?  Not  at 
all!  There  marched,  there  strutted  forth,  from 
the  little  white  railway  station,  the  smartest  lot  of 
officers  I  ever  saw  parade  the  Nevsky ! — a  gala 
party  in  full-dress  uniforms,  clanking  their  swords 
and  blowing  smoke  rings  to  the  sun.  Was  this  the 
downfallen,  the  degraded  garrison  of  a  great 
fortress?  Not  at  all.  It  was  the  triumphant 
arrival  of  distinguished  winter  tourists.  Well-fed, 
superior  beings  they  were,  looking  down  on  their 
curious  surroundings.  They  sauntered  at  ease, 
stood  in  picturesque  groups,  bowing  over  their 
cigarettes;  and  the  nice,  kindly  Japanese,  who 
had  come  so  full  of  sympathy  for  the  poor  horios, 
were  nonplussed.  I  was  too.  These  were  not 
prisoners.  Oh,  no !  These  were  not  the  men  I  had 
in  fancy  seen  slinking  and  crouching,  hiding  from 
the  light  of  day,  fearing  to  meet  a  Russian's 
reproachful  eye — not  the  men  I  had  fancied  extenu- 
ating, explaining,  and  fleeing  from  the  irate 
Grievsky,  lest  he  throttle  them  on  the  spot.  The 
revulsion  of  feeling  was  so  abrupt  and  complete 
that  I  felt  myself  verging  towards  hysterical 
laughter;  and  I  fled  from  the  sight.  It  was  not 
a  dramatic  scene  at  all,  this  landing  of  Port 


"KINGS  IN  EXILE"  215 

Arthur's  proud  garrison  in  Japan.  There  was 
nothing  tragic  or  soul-stirring  about  it  at  all. 
Verestchagin  could  not  have  made  an  historic  pic- 
ture of  it.  One  artillery  officer  brought  his  little 
daughter,  who  had  been  his  companion  in  one  of  the 
high  forts  all  through  the  siege.  The  mother  died 
as  the  siege  began,  and  when  the  surrender  came, 
where  could  he  send  her?  With  whom?  General 
Nogi  consented,  and  the  little  daughter  of  the 
battery  came  to  Japan.  Another  artillerist 
brought  with  him  his  tiny  nephew,  three  years  old, 
orphaned  of  both  father  and  mother  since  June. 
Poor  baby  !  Poor  mite !  Wide-eyed  and  joyful  in 
his  miniature  Cossack  uniform,  complete  to  felt 
over-boots,  leather  and  fur  coat  and  tall  fur  cap, 
he  trotted  along  beside  an  indulgent  Japanese 
officer. 

A  few  of  the  rank  and  file  were  pale  and  sickly- 
looking,  sad-faced  and  silent;  but  these  were 
bleached  from  long  service  in  covered  trenches, 
in  casemates  and  galleries  underground,  not  from 
starvation  or  scurvy.  All  these  were  sad  and 
silent,  partly  from  dull  fear  of  what  might  befall 
them  here  in  an  unchristian  land,  and  from  the 
habit  of  silence  which  the  continued  roar  of  guns 
and  shells  had  imposed.  They  formed  in  lines, 
were  counted  by  smart  little  Japanese  officers  who 
barely  reached  to  their  shoulders;  and,  at  the 
word  of  command,  these  huge  creatures  in  fur 


216         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

bonnets  and  sheepskins,  moved  off  briskly,  obedient 
to  one  master  as  to  another.  The  people  in  the 
streets  looked  on  open-mouthed  at  these  hairy, 
furry  giants,  who  so  overtopped  them.  And  the 
contrast !  Seeing  our  giants  beside  these  pigmies, 
I  kept  asking  myself  again  and  again — How  had 
it  happened?  How  could  it  be ? 

They  did  not  bear  themselves  as  captives.  Not 
they.  They  walked  like  kings.  Kings  in  exile. 
Yermoloff,  in  his  fur  coat  and  gros  bonnet,  would 
have  made  four  of  those  who  stood  guard  over 
him,  and  children  gaped  with  awe  at  our  giant 
defender  of  the  Two-Hundred-and-Three-Metre 
Hill. 


CHAPTER  XXV 
DARK  DAYS 

Sunday,  January  22nd. 

'  I  ^HESE  have  been  exciting  days.  All  that  we 
•*•  have  wondered  about  is  known,  all  the 
mysteries  are  laid  bare.  Grievsky  is  a  merciless 
judge  and  prosecutor,  and  the  poor  officers  in 
bandages  might  well  wish  they  had  been  left  in 
the  Port  Arthur  hospitals.  Every  technical  de- 
tail and  problem  is  dwelt  on  by  the  hour,  every 
feat  of  engineering  must  be  sketched  for  him  and 
diagrams  made.  There  were  no  sallies,  but  he 
repels  all  the  attacks  over  again,  and  as  an  en- 
gineering chief,  his  heart  is  in  the  trenches,  the 
galleries,  caponieres,  and  redoubts  of  the  forts. 
The  working  of  searchlights  and  shooting  of  fish 
torpedoes  by  naval  men  do  not  meet  with  his 
approval.  That  was  unwarranted  trespassing  on 
engineer's  ground  by  those  sailors.  "Ugh!  I'd 
like  to  see  them  shooting  any  of  their  water  toys 
from  my  batteries." 

A  poor  lieutenant,  now  in  No.  5  ward,  was  on 
the  bridge  of  the  next  ship  when  the  Petropavlovsk 
struck  the  mine.  He  heard  one  explosion,  saw  the 

217 


218         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

ship  stagger,  wallow,  and  push  her  nose  down  into 
the  sea.  He  saw  the  crew  leap  from  the  decks ; 
he  helped  rescue  them,  even  that  bawling  calf  of  a 
Cyril  Vladimirovitch,  who  was  a  good  swimmer 
and  not  hurt,  yet  who  bellowed  and  roared  until 
he  was  saved;  who  fought  off  and  prevented  the 
rescue  of  many  a  better  fellow.  "Save  me !  Save 
me !"  he  bellowed  in  fright,  "I  am  the  Grand  Duke 
Cyril,"  and  he  kicked  away  the  wounded  sailors  as 
he  climbed  in  the  boat,  beat  them  away  with  an 
oar,  and  beat  the  boat's  crew  until  they  did  as  he 
bid  and  rowed  him  to  land,  and  left  the  wounded 
to  struggle  and  drown. 

"No  one  seems  to  have  seen  Vassili  Verestchagin 
after  the  ship  went  down.  Ah!  My  God!  to 
think  of  his  being  allowed  to  go  there,  to  risk  his 
life  with  that  fleet.  To  lose  him,  was  to  lose  one 
who  had  value  in  the  eyes  of  all  the  world.  Vassili 
should  have  lived  to  paint  the  scene,  with  Cyril 
beating  wounded  men  away  from  the  life-boats. 
Cyril !  worthy  descendant  of  that  Glottstop- 
Holstein  tribe!  Cyril  will  demand  the  life-saving 
medal  now,  I  suppose.  Did  he  not  save  his  own 
life?  Give  him  a  St.  George !  and  the  St.  Anne,  by 
all  means ! 

" Ah!  bas!  My  compliments  to  the  imperial  Rus- 
sian navy! — Even  to  that  Rojestvensky  idling  by 
the  coral  groves  of  Madagascar." 

Four  Russian  surgeons  came  over  with  the  sick 


DARK  DAYS  219 

ones,  as  there  were  not  enough  Japanese  surgeons 
and  interpreters.  The  Japanese  were  surprised 
that  the  surgeons  were  not  Jews.  "Yes,"  said  the 
interpreter  at  the  barracks  to  me,  "all  the  sur- 
geons are  Jews  except  these,  just  as  all  the 
engineers  are  Poles." 

It  is  cold  now,  cloudy  and  gloomy — the  "grey 
days"  of  Rome.  The  wooden  houses  are  as  cold 
as  stone  palaces,  and  much  more  draughty, — and 
all  is  woe.  Vladimir  frets  and  grows  feverish 
again,  after  we  had  thought  the  tertian  entirely 
broken,  and  he  sleeps  but  little.  One  knee  is  still 
rigid  and  useless ;  his  spine  is  agony  when  he  walks 
or  tries  to  lift  his  knee,  and  he  can  only  shuffle  his 
feet  over  the  floor.  All  my  massage  and  efforts 
seem  useless,  now  that  this  penetrating  damp  cold 
has  gone  in  to  his  joints.  The  officers  begged  that 
something  be  done  to  make  the  barracks  more 
comfortable;  for  draughts  suck  up  through  the 
thin  floor  and  walls,  where  the  thatch  roofs  join 
loosely.  All  are  sneezing  and  coughing.  We  made 
a  tent  or  canopy  over  Vladimir's  bed,  which  kept 
him  secure  from  cold  currents  while  he  lay  there; 
but  he  was  exposed  to  a  dozen  draughts  when  he 
lay  on  the  long  chair. 

It  is  absurd  that,  here  in  semi-tropical  Japan, 
with  palm  trees  and  oranges  on  every  side,  and  my 
camellia  hedge  in  splendid  bloom — that  we  should 
feel  the  cold  indoors  as  we  have  never  felt  it  in 


220         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

Russia.  The  floors  are  always  cold  to  the  feet,  for 
the  wind  has  full  sweep  through  the  open  air-space 
beneath  and  up  through  the  cracks.  The  longer 
the  ingenious,  portable  oil  and  charcoal  stoves 
burn,  and  give  out  comforting  heat,  the  more  the 
pine  boards  shrink,  until  one  sees  the  sky  in  hair 
lines  all  along  the  walls.  It  is  impossible  to  save 
the  pneumonia  cases,  and  I  watched  one  poor 
Siberian  to  his  death  the  other  morning,  when  wet 
snowflakes  preceded  a  chill,  rainy  day,  that 
seemed  the  dreariest  we  had  known. 

When  I  had  made  Vladimir  safe  and  warm  for 
the  night,  and  was  leaving,  Nesan  came  out  from 
the  chemist's  room  with  her  bottles,  and  walked 
with  me  past  the  chancery,  to  tell  me  that  the  chief- 
surgeon  had  been  ordered  to  command  the  great 
hospitals  at  Dalny.  This  was  the  last  blow. 

I  waved  my  hand  to  Nesan  and  ran  out  into  the 
darkness  and  rain,  unable  to  repress  my  tears. 
The  coolie,  crouching  under  the  lee  of  the  guard- 
house, called  to  me  to  wait,  while  he  lighted  his 
paper  lantern  and  turned  the  back  of  the  jin- 
rikisha  to  the  driving  rain.  He  tied  me  fast  in 
the  tiny  interior  with  the  rain  apron ;  and,  chuck- 
ling cheerily  at  the  misadventures  and  the  weather, 
pattered  with  bare  feet  down  the  shining,  wet  road. 
His  worn  rubber  coat  showed  one  thin,  rain-soaked, 
blue  cotton  garment  beneath  it ;  and  the  bare  knees 
caught  the  lantern  light  as  they  swung  back  and 


DARK  DAYS  221 

forth  with  the  regularity  of  pendulums.  Still 
chirruping  like  a  cheerful  bird,  and  laughing,  as 
if  the  raindrops  he  wiped  from  the  edge  of  the 
hood  were  precious  things,  lucky  jewels,  he  was 
gathering,  he  helped  me  out  at  my  door.  I  looked 
at  him,  as  the  shoji  slid  open  and  sent  the  full 
lamplight  on  the  ugly  little  scrap  of  a  man.  He 
was  old,  since  all  the  young  jinrikisha  coolies  have 
gone  to  the  war,  or  over  to  Ujina  to  enjoy  the 
high  wages  at  the  government  stores ;  yet  he  was 
cheerful  and  happy,  contented  with  the  hardest  lot 
that  I  can  think  of  for  a  human  being.  "You 
have  no  trouble,  I  can  see  that,"  I  said  to  him.  "A 
full  pipe  and  a  rice  bowl,  and  the  dark,  wet,  cold 
night  is  the  same  as  sunny  noonday  to  you." 

"Okasama,  my  only  son  went  to  the  war.  He 
died  at  Ni  San  Rei  [Two-Hundred-and-Three- 
Metre  Hill]  that  last  time.  I  am  old  and  my  wife 
is  feeble,  and  this  kuruma  feeds  us  all — all — my 
son's  wife  and  his  three  children.  Although  the 
little  box  [cremation  ashes  and  relics]  came  three 
weeks  ago,  I  have  not  yet  had  the  priests  say  the 
prayers  at  my  house,  and  his  friends  go  with  us  to 
the  temple.  I  have  known  much  sorrow,  truly, 
Okasama."  The  old  kurumaya  bowed  with  the 
grace  of  a  noble,  proudly.  With  dignity,  he 
lifted  the  paper  lantern  and  hooked  it  to  the 
shafts.  It  was  a  reproof  that  covered  me  with 
shame. 


222          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

"Stop!  Stop!"  I  said.  "Come  for  me  in  the 
morning  at  nine  o'clock,  and  I  want  to  send  now 
some  little  things  to  your  son's  children.  Anna, 
make  ready  plenty,  much,  a  big  Japanese  supper 
for  three  times  three  little  children,  and  give 
Jcuruyama  san  some  hot  tea  first.  He  waited  so 
long  in  the  rain  for  me,  he  is  cold  and  hungry. 
Do  not  forget  that." 

My  feet  of  lead  dragged  me  to  my  room,  when 
the  soft-spoken,  purring  little  housemaid  had 
changed  my  shoes.  I  sat  there  in  the  cold,  forlorn, 
alone — alone.  Vladimir  sick  and  alone  too — far 
away  in  the  cold.  Alone !  A  black  night  of  sorrow 
encompassed  me.  I  thought  of  the  old  kurumaya, 
the  sick  wife,  the  lost  son,  and  the  family  depend- 
ent on  the  one  feeble  old  man.  And  he  so  cheerful 
and  courteous,  while  he  sat  cold,  wet,  and  of 
course  hungry,  waiting  for  me  in  the  rain.  I 
began  to  weep  quietly,  and  when  Anna  came  in  and 
asked  why,  I  burst  into  violent  sobbing  and 
alarmed  her  with  a  nervous  collapse  that  I  have 
not  approached  in  many,  many  years. 

It  was  Anna  who  went  out  in  the  morning  at 
nine  to  find  the  American  pope,  and  ask  how  I 
should  relieve  the  old  kurumaya;  or  rather,  how 
much  money,  and  in  what  form  I  could  put  it,  to 
meet  the  expenses  of  the  honourable,  military 
funeral.  It  must  not  come  from  me,  a  Russian, 
but  anonymously,  through  some  Red  Cross  mem- 


DARK  DAYS  223 

her.  Would  one  of  them  do  it  for  me?  or  ask 
Madame  Takasu  to  do  it? 

In  the  end,  I  sent  twenty,  immaculate,  new  one- 
yen  notes,  folded  in  pure  white  paper,  accom- 
panied by  a  great  bouquet  of  green  saJcaki 
branches ;  and  the  next  Sunday  there  was  a 
funeral,  with  the  local  band  in  attendance,  start- 
ing from  Madame  Takasu's  own  courtyard,  where 
the  priests  held  a  short  service  over  the  little 
wooden  box  that  came  from  Port  Arthur.  The 
old  man  marched  in  stiff  silk  hakama,  leading  a 
sedate,  splendidly-striding  boy  of  eight,  as  chief 
mourner  and  guardian  of  the  tablets.  A  concourse 
of  friends  trailed  away  through  the  town  and 
across  the  belt  of  fields  to  a  temple  near  Dogo, 
and  the  funeral  party  from  the  castle  barracks 
sounded  the  bugles  and  rendered  the  final  honours 
there. 

I  shall  not  tell  Vladimir  of  this  for  a  long  time, 
and  I  hope  his  brother  officers  may  never  find  it 
out.  I  do  not  like  their  attitudes  at  times  when  I 
am  only  trying  to  be  just  to  these  people,  who  are 
kind  to  me  beyond  all  that  I  could  ever  have 
imagined. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 
FROM  PORT  ARTHUR 

Sunday,  January  29th. 

'  I  VHE  Contessa's  pretty  post  cards  come  daily, 
•*•  and  Lyov  is  for  the  most  part  steeped  in 
reveries  and  interested  only  in  his  own  convales- 
cence. He  sits  up  in  a  long  chair  each  day,  and 
one  arm  is  free  of  its  bandages  and  is  subject  to 
my  massage  treatment.  He  says  he  shall  ask  to 
be  sent  to  Kioto,  as  soon  as  he  is  able  to  leave  the 
barracks. 

The  arrival  of  all  the  Port  Arthur  officers  at 
once  last  week  was  like  the  arrival  of  the  Court 
at  Yalta.  Each  day,  some  one  has  a  surprising 

rencontre.     Andrew  Y was   half   smothered 

one  day  by  a  visitor  who  cried:  "Oh!  Uncle! 
Why,  Uncle !  I  did  not  know  that  you  were  in  the 
army  again!"  And  it  was  his  nephew.  "Saints 
above!"  cried  Andrew,  stupefied.  "No  more  did 
I  know  that  you  were  in  Port  Arthur !" 

They  all  have  photographs  which  tell  the  story 
better  than  words,  for,  although  they  were  per- 
mitted to  bring  away  only  a  portmanteau  and  a 
travelling  rug,  all  came  out  with  their  pockets 
224 


FROM  PORT  ARTHUR  225 

stuffed  and  their  clothing  filled  with  traps.  "I 
was  a  standing  column  of  photographic  prints 
and  film  negatives,"  said  one  officer ;  "and  my 
lens  was  such  a  good  one  that  I  put  it  in  my 
pocket  and  will  buy  a  new  camera  over  here." 
Many  mourn  for  their  books,  pictures,  and  musical 
instruments,  which  they  had  to  leave  behind.  "Oh ! 
it  did  break  my  heart  to  leave  my  pictures,"  one 
told  me.  "I  had  them  brought  out  from  my 
Kronstadt  house  as  soon  as  I  was  billeted  for 
Port  Arthur,  three  years  ago.  I  paid  insurance 
on  a  value  of  50,000  roubles;  and  then — I  had 
to  come  away  and  leave  them  all  on  the  walls. 
Leave  them  for  the  Japanese  to  use  as  targets,  I 
suppose.  That  is  what  the  Prussian  officers  did 
to  the  paintings  in  French  chateaux. 

"We  were  all  limited  in  the  amount  of  luggage, 
but  luckily  it  was  cold  weather  and  we  could  wear 
two  and  three  sets  of  clothes.  It  was  like  a  fete 
day  review,  when  we  left  Port  Arthur.  Every  one 
wore  his  best  uniforms,  and  there  was  elation  and 
excitement  in  just  getting  out  of  that  hole,  where 
we  had  seen  such  horrors.  No  one  had  luggage 
save  the  Stoessels.  And,  Mother  of  Mercy !  how 
the  Barina  had  made  good  her  last  opportunity! 
She  had  a  little  garden  and  cow,  you  know,  and 
some  chickens ;  and  headquarters  milk  and  eggs 
sold  at  rising  prices  all  through  the  siege. 

"The  first  any  one  suspected  of  Stoessel's  inten- 


226         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

tion  was  when  the  servants  brought  word  that  the 
Barina  was  packing  her  trunks.  She  brought 
away  with  her  twenty-two  boxes,  and  the  rest  of 
us,  each  only  a  rug  and  portmanteau.  The  regu- 
lations said,  'Retaining  their  swords  and  carry- 
ing the  same  baggage  allowance  as  Japanese 
officers  of  corresponding  rank' — which  is  sixty 
pounds  only.  Stoessel  asked  General  Nogi,  at  the 
dinner  table,  after  the  signature,  if  the  Barina 
could  take  all  her  own  things  away  with  her,  and 
the  old  Spartan  said  chivalrously  that  Madame 
Stoessel  should  take  what  she  pleased  without 
regarding  regulations — other  ladies,  with  children, 
the  same.  Nogi  prearranged  those  things  like  a 
kind  father.  Every  officer's  wife  with  a  baby 
had  a  soldier  allotted  her  as  servant.  Others,  a 
soldier  to  each  two  children. 

"The  Barina  packed  up  everything  in  their 
establishment,  and  her  twenty-two  trunks  so  filled 
up  a  railway  wagon  that  twenty  Cossacks,  who 
ought  to  have  been  in  that  wagon,  had  to  ride  on 
the  platforms.  But  not  a  trunk  would  she  carry 
for  any  one  else.  Not  she.  Not  a  picture,  an 
embroidery,  or  old  Peking  treasure  would  she  take 
back  to  Russia  for  any  one  of  their  own  staff.  We 
all  went  down  to  Dalny  on  the  one  train  that  morn- 
ing. The  six  officers  of  highest  rank  were  to  ride 
in  the  one  railway  carriage;  but,  when  old 
Smirnoff  found  that  he  was  to  ride  in  with  Stoessel 


FROM  PORT  ARTHUR  227 

and  the  Barina,  he  said  loudly :  'No,  no,  I  will 
have  nothing  to  do  with  that  General,'  and  jumped 
into  the  carriage  crowded  with  orderlies.  And 
Bieli  and  the  others  with  him !  The  Japanese  were 
fearfully  embarrassed.  They  had  not  prearranged 
any  such  scenes.  They  did  not  know  which  to 
apologise  to  first.  Smirnoff  waits  until  he  returns 
to  Russia,  and  then  Stoessel's  sword  of  honour 
and  Black  Eagle  of  the  Kaiser  will  look  very 
small. 

"We  held  a  council  on  the  27th,  and  as  there 
were  ample  provisions,  enough  for  two  months  at 
least,  we  voted  not  to  surrender.  Stoessel  did  not 
fear  his  council  of  generals  and  colonels.  Oh! 
No !  But  there  was  some  one  he  did  fear ;  one  who 
commanded  him  to  surrender — 'She-Who-Must- 
Be-Obeyed' !  In  fear  of  the  Barina,  by  stealth, 
without  letting  us  know,  he  sent  the  messengers  out 
to  Nogi.  We  were  watching,  and  when  his  Cos- 
sacks rode  out  toward  the  Japanese  lines  and  began 
to  display  a  flag  of  truce,  a  dozen  binocles  were  on 
them.  They  telephoned  down  from  Wangtai  to 
headquarters  to  ask  what  the  parley  was  about. 
No  one  at  headquarters  knew.  The  next  morning 
we  all  knew.  We  all  saw  the  procession  of  shame 
ride  out  to  surrender.  'The  General  surrenders, 
the  fortress  does  not,'  said  Smirnoff.  And  Smir- 
noff was  right.  Smirnoff  was  in  command  of  Port 
Arthur,  of  the  fortress.  Stoessel  should  have 


AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

surrendered  only  himself  and  his  Siberian  troops 
and  gone  out.  I  am  sick  of  all  these  horrors,  of 
the  sight  of  death,  the  smell  of  blood  and  corpses. 
If  I  ever  get  back  to  Russia,  I  shall  leave  the  army. 
I  am  tired  of  war." 

Another  friend  commanded  the  battery  on  the 
Golden  Hill  above  the  harbour  entrance.  "For  a 
year  I  lived  on  that  hilltop.  Everything  I  saw ;  all 
save  the  first  part  of  the  night  attack  by  the  Japa- 
nese that  caused  the  war.  I  was  down  in  the  city 
that  night" — and  we  interrupted  with  laughter 
in  which  he  had  finally  to  join.  "What  sights 
there  were  from  my  Col  d'Or !  I  miss  my  lookout, 
my  great  sweep  of  sky  and  sea,  and  the  horizon 
with  its  Japanese  ships,  now  that  I  live  in  a  damp 
temple  with  low,  overhanging  eaves,  and  see  only 
a  stone  path,  some  gravestones,  and  a  granite 
image  of  Buddha  sitting  in  the  rain. 

"And  what  devils  those  Japanese  were!  Fear! 
They  don't  know  the  word.  Came  right  in  under 
our  guns,  into  the  muzzles  of  the  guns  of  the  lower 
forts,  to  sink  their  ships!  That  American  who 
tried  to  sink  a  ship  in  the  Cuban  harbour  to  block 
the  Spanish  fleet  was  only  one,  and  only  tried  it 
once.  Here  were  Japanese  by  the  dozen,  the  hun- 
dred, coming  at  it  again  and  again.  I  wish  we 
had  some  naval  officers  of  that  same  kind ;  some  one 
who  could  have  followed  Togo's  fleet  and  discovered 
his  naval  base.  To  think  that  Togo  kept  his 


FROM  PORT  ARTHUR  229 

ships  as  near  us  as  the  Elliot  Islands !  and  Starke 
and  Oukhtomsky  never  found  it  out! 

"Ah,  it  was  beautiful  up  there  on  my  Col  d'Or ! 
Moonlight  and  searchlight  made  sea  and  land  as 
bright  as  day.  Then  star  rockets  and  burning 
parachutes !  It  was  fete  Venitienne  all  the  time.  I 
have  seen  all  the  spectacular  side  of  war. 

"I  watched  Makaroff  go  out  and  come  back, 
and  watched  his  ships  manoeuvre  about  just  below 
us,  to  allow  them  to  work  their  way  back  into  the 
harbour,  one  by  one.  Rascheffski  had  his  camera 
out,  for  he  had  long  been  waiting  for  just  that 
chance  at  the  whole  fleet  in  the  open.  Oh,  every- 
thing was  quite  right  that  day — the  sun  just  high 
enough,  and  the  sea  so  calm !  They  were  racing 
signal  flags  up  and  down,  giving  the  orders  to 
each  ship,  when  I  saw  the  Petropavlovsk  give  a 
queer  pitch,  a  jerk.  The  officers  on  the  bridge 
threw  up  their  arms,  and  others  ran  out  of  the 
towers  and  gun-turrets.  The  ship  gave  another 
jerk,  the  water  boiled  around  it,  and  the  muffled 
sound  of  an  explosion  came  up  to  us.  'Great  God  P 
cried  Rascheffski,  'she  has  struck  a  mine !'  and  he 
whipped  out  his  plate-holder,  turned  it,  and  drew 
the  slide.  As  he  touched  the  bulb,  a  heavier  boom 
sounded,  and  a  cloud  of  black  smoke  closed  around 
the  Petropavlovsk.  I  could  not  breathe  nor  utter 
a  sound,  as  I  realised  that  the  flagship  of  our  fleet, 
our  Admiral,  and  our  Grand  Duke  were  in  that 


230         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

black  cloud  on  the  water ;  that  the  huge  iron  ship 
was  sinking,  and  the  wounded  crew  drowning 
before  my  eyes.  I  saw  the  black  nose  of  the  ship 
rear  up  and  then  dive  down.  The  smoke  drifted 
away,  and  then  men  and  wreckage  came  to  the 
top. 

"I  turned  away  for  a  second,  all  my  nerve  gone 
with  the  horrible  sight  witnessed  in  just  two 
minutes  and  a  half.  And  that  cold-blooded  devil  of 
a  Rascheffski  was  putting  away  his  last  plate- 
holder  !  While  every  one  else  on  that  parapet  was 
transfixed  with  horror  and  speechless,  Rascheffski 
had  been  exposing  his  plates,  clicking  his  camera  as 
coolly  as  at  a  review. 

*'  'How  fortunate  that  I  had  my  plate-holders 
full,*  he  said,  'I  have  made  six  exposures !'  He 
had  taken  one  picture  and  was  ready  for  another, 
when  the  Petropavlovsk  gave  her  first  rebound  from 
the  mine.  The  same  afternoon  he  developed  and 
printed,  and  the  pictures  went  on  to  his  Majesty  at 
Petersburg,  and  all  Europe  has  since  seen  them. 
We  have  prints  from  them,  too. 

"It  was  a  great  time  for  photography,  there  at 
Port  Arthur.  Those  materials  never  gave  out. 
You  see  the  prints  here  of  the  successive  stages  of 
the  bombardment — of  the  officers'  club  in  May, 
and  the  same  club  in  December! — Ah!  those  last 
days  at  Port  Arthur !  The  sad  pictures  of  the 
Sevastopol  at  bay  outside  the  harbour !  Each  night 


FROM  PORT  ARTHUR  231 

our  searchlights  showed  those  devils  of  Japanese 
nosing  around  her  with  their  torpedo  boats — 
wolves  around  a  dying  stag.  And  then  we  saw 
the  wounded  Sevastopol  dragged  out  and  sunk,  at 
the  foot  of  our  hill ! 

"And  now,  it  is  all  over.    We  are  here." 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

THE  COURSE  OF  TRUE  LOVE  NOT 
SMOOTH  IN  JAPAN 

Tuesday,  January  31st. 

THE  surrendered  officers  all  grumble  at  their 
crowded  quarters  and — at  the  cold ! 

Oh!  how  these  grizzled,  old  Siberians  complain 
of  the  cold !  of  the  rigors  of  a  Japanese  winter ! 
with  the  thermometer  ten  degrees  above  the  frost 
point !  When  it  is  forty  degrees  by  my  English 
thermometer,  they  shiver  and  gather  in  the  sun, 
like  so  many  Neapolitan  lazzaroni.  They  put  all 
the  officers  out  in  one  common  ward  for  three  days, 
while  carpenters  sealed  up  the  cracks  and  joints  in 
the  flimsy  woodwork  and  made  the  place  snug 
and  comfortable.  And  that  was  an  experience! 

At  the  time  of  the  surrender,  General  Nogi  said 
that  the  Port  Arthur  officers  should  retain  their 
swords.  At  Matsuyama  the  commandant  required 
them  to  deliver  up  their  swords,  as  the  regulations 
for  prisoners  of  war  required  it.  He  could  not 
let  prisoners  go  armed ;  and  as  none  of  the  officers 
previously  here  retained  their  swords,  he  could  not 
make  such  a  distinction  for  the  Port  Arthur  men. 


TRUE  LOVE  IN  JAPAN 

The  officers  protested,  and  the  commandant  tele- 
graphed to  the  War  Minister  at  Tokyo.  Word 
came  back  that  they  must  be  disarmed,  like  the 
other  prisoners,  and  their  swords  put  in  safe  keep- 
ing until  the  end  of  the  war.  Any  resistance  was, 
of  course,  useless,  but  some  of  the  young  officers 
foolishly  resisted,  against  the  protests  and  advice 
of  senior  officers,  and  were  disarmed  by  force,  and 
are  now  imprisoned ;  others  broke  their  swords  and 
threw  the  pieces  on  the  ground ;  and  some  laid  the 
swords  on  a  table  and  turned  away.  "You  may 
take  my  sword  behind  my  back,  like  a  thief.  I  will 
not  yield  it,"  said  one.  Those  who  had  the  swords 
of  St.  Anne  wept,  kissed  the  swords  of  honour  their 
sovereign  had  given  them,  and  removed  the  red- 
and-white  sword  knots,  to  wear  as  decorations  on 
their  breasts.  I  think  it  was  chiefly  bad  manage- 
ment and  bad  manners  which  made  all  the  trouble. 
As  Vladimir  says,  the  chief-surgeon  could  have 
gone,  taken  the  swords  away,  and  left  every  officer 
his  friend ;  but  the  commandant  is  of  another  type 
and  school,  arrogant  as  a  Prussian,  hard,  tact- 
less, and  almost  contemptuous  in  manner  to  these 
new  captives,  to  the  "surrendered  officers,"  as  all 
call  those  who  came  from  Port  Arthur,  in  dis- 
tinction from  the  "captured  officers,"  who  were 
here  before  January. 

One  poor  fellow  wailed  to  Grievsky,  "We  know 
the    Japanese    all    despise    us.      They    think    us 


234         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

cowards  to  surrender  and  come  here  as  prisoners. 
By  their  code,  we  should  all  have  committed  suicide 
when  Stoessel  sold  us  out.  But  we  Russians  have 
not  the  courage  for  cold  steel  in  the  stomach,  just 
because  a  battle  or  a  fort  has  been  lost." 

With  three  hundred  idle,  unhappy,  homesick, 
heartsick  officers  here,  I  fear  more  trouble.  All 
are  depressed,  morbidly  sensitive,  and  their  nerves 
are  on  edge.  They  are  looking  for  insults  and 
humiliations;  and  of  course  they  find  them  or 
imagine  them.  They  will  not  see  anything  that 
the  Japanese  do  for  them  in  the  right  light.  They 
persist  in  attributing  hostile,  sinister  motives  to 
them,  and  credit  them  with  a  wish  to  insult  and 
persecute  them.  I  can  talk  my  one  or  two  stray 
visitors  into  a  more  reasonable  frame  of  mind,  but 
I  cannot  get  at,  nor  harangue,  the  whole  three 
hundred  in  the  temples  and  quarters  in  town.  If 
they  would  only  let  me  go  around  and  visit  them  at 
each  place — each  etape  Grievsky  bitterly  calls  the 
places  of  detention — I  am  sure  that  I  could  pacify 
some  and  put  them  in  a  better  frame  of  mind.  It 
would  be  better  if  there  were  at  least  one  of  our 
own  higher  and  older  officers  here  to  have  some 
authority  and  control  over  these  young  hotheads, 
some  one  to  appeal  to,  to  act  as  arbiter  and  spokes- 
man. But  here  are  only  a  few  colonels,  and  the 
rest  are  all  majors,  captains,  and  lieutenants. 

I  asked  the  surgeon  why  they  do  not  send  the 


TRUE  LOVE  IN  JAPAN  235 

two  crazy  officers  back  to  Russia,  as  they  did  the 
seventy  crippled  and  infirm  men  in  October?  But 
he  says:  "No!  No!  Too  many  would  go  insane, 
if  that  was  a  way  to  get  to  Russia.  We  cannot  be 
too  sure  about  these  two,  sometimes." 

The  reaction  after  the  tremendous  excitement 
and  long  nerve  strain  of  Port  Arthur  is  too  much 
for  many  of  the  newcomers.  Many  wish  now  that 
they  had  given  parole  and  gone  to  Europe. 
Although  our  officers  are  not  such  sportsmen  and 
athletes  as  the  English,  they  complain  bitterly  of 
the  want  of  exercise.  "Think  of  it !  Forty  of  us 
walking  up  and  down,  up  and  down  among  the 
crowded  gravestones,  taking  our  turns  at  sentry 
go.  I  wish  I  had  gone  with  Stoessel.  I  never  did 
care  about  this  war,  anyhow.  La  guerre  n'est  pas 
gai!  I  was  on  the  point  of  going  to  give  my 
parole,  when  I  heard  that  old  Fock  was  actually 
going  as  prisoner  to  Japan.  After  that,  I  had  to 
play  heroic  too.  Old  granny !  When  Fock 
urged  the  council  to  surrender  in  September,  the 
first  time  we  lost  Two-Hundred-and-Three-Metre 
Hill,  he  had  had  his  fill  of  war  and  battle  then ;  but 
Kondrachenko  and  the  brave  ones  were  so  fierce 
that  he  never  proposed  it  again,  although  he  would 
have  been  glad  to  do  so  at  any  time.  They  were 
all  hard  on  him,  except  Stoessel  and  Reiss.  Fock 
is  afraid  to  go  back  to  Russia,  so  he  sticks  to 
Smirnoff  as  his  only  hope;  shares  his  same  fate, 


236         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

copies  his  brave  conduct.  Yet  Smirnoff  won't 
speak  to  him !  And  there  they  are  both  at 
Nagoya !  Each  has  an  archbishop's  palace  to  live 
in,  and  we,  the  victims  of  Stoessel  and  Fock,  are 
crowded  together  here  like  Siberian  convicts.  No 
landscape  gardens,  no  tennis  courts  for  us." 

The  Japanese  find  that  the  rank  and  file  cannot 
get  on  peaceably  together,  because  of  their  differ- 
ences of  race  and  religion;  so  that,  even  in  the 
hospital,  they  must  separate  them,  and  put  the 
Jews,  Poles,  Finns,  and  the  Baltic  provincers  by 
themselves.  Then  we  have  Circassians,  and  every 
kind  of  a  Central  Asian  you  can  think  of  in  Cos- 
sack dress,  on  to  Lyov's  Buriat  Mongol,  with  the 
placid  face  of  Buddha — that  Osip,  who  ought  to 
wear  a  lama's  brocade  robe  and  say  his  rosary. 
His  face  is  so  serenely  the  Buddha  of  Japanese  art 
that  I  long  to  gild  his  face,  lacquer  him,  and  put 
him  in  some  temple. 

The  Japanese  show  marked  favour  to  the  Jews, 
Poles,  Finns,  and  Baltic  provincers,  because  they 
do  less  fighting  and  more  reading  and  writing 
than  the  others;  use  more  paper  and  pencils  and 
notebooks ;  take  more  baths,  wash  more  clothes,  and 
try  to  occupy  themselves.  I  said  this  to  the  inter- 
preter one  day,  and  he  said  the  Japanese  ought 
to  be  kinder  to  these  non-orthodox  ones  because 
they  were  treated  so  badly  in  Russia  and  in  the 
army!  Madame  Takasu  even  told  me  that  the 


TRUE  LOVE  IN  JAPAN  237 

Finns  and  Baltic-ers  are  Christians  (meaning 
Protestants),  the  same  as  the  American  mis- 
sionaries. 

Two  Russian  ladies,  who  have  lived  in  Port 
Arthur  all  through  the  siege,  wives  of  engineer 
officers,  have  asked  to  come  here  to  live.  The  in- 
terpreter told  me,  and  he  significantly  added: 
"They  are  from  Baltic  provinces,  Okasama.  They 
are  real  Christians,  Lutherans  they  call  them!" 
One  of  them  has  a  daughter,  sixteen  years  old, 
who  served  as  a  hospital  nurse  during  the  last 
week  of  the  siege.  The  other  brings  a  little  baby, 
born  during  the  last  weeks  of  the  siege.  Thirty 
such  siege-born  infants  were  sent  to  Nagasaki,  and 
good,  kind,  old  Nogi  let  the  mothers  choose  thirty 
soldiers  to  go  on  with  them  to  Russia  as  nurses. 

And  now  for  our  romance,  a  real  storybook  kind 
of  romance.  When  one  wounded  officer  reached 
the  quarantine  station  and  read  the  orders  for 
steam  baths  ashore,  he  sent  word  that  as  his 
orderly  was  a  woman  she  could  not  go  ashore 
with  the  Cossacks.  The  Japanese  drew  long  faces, 
they  stood  aghast.  Romance  of  that  sort  did  not 
appeal  to  them.  "Not  Cossack!  Not  man! 
Naruhodo!  Not  wife!  Naruhodo,  these  Chris- 
tians are  queer !"  There  was  a  tragic  parting  on 
deck.  Officer  and  orderly  kissed  and  embraced 
and  wept  loudly,  regardless  of  the  Japanese  on- 
lookers. The  orderly  was  quarantined  after  all 


238         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

the  transports  were  gone,  and  they  have  sent  her 
to  the  poor  French  Consul  in  Kobe.  She  waits, 
the  Consul  says,  until  the  Blessed  Virgin  shall  in- 
tervene, for  he  can  do  nothing. 

"Ah,  I  am  here  in  prison,  and  my  bride  is  in 
Kobe,"  wails  the  poor  fellow  as  he  lies  in  the 
hospital. 

Vladimir  is  not  sympathetic,  and  in  his  dry, 
extra-dry  manner  advises  me  to  let  the  thing  alone, 
not  to  mix  myself  up  in  this  affair,  which  is  not 
our  affair.  But  I  still  hear  that  weak  and  fretful 
voice  repeating  it :  "Ah !  I  am  here  in  prison,  and 
my  bride  is  in  Kobe." 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 
DAILY  LIFE 

Thursday,  February  2nd. 

T  T  7E  were  talking,  at  tea  to-day,  of  the  little 
Amazon  who  followed  her  lover  down  to 
Port  Arthur  and  into  captivity,  and  which  seems 
so  romantic  to  me,  in  this  twentieth-century  time. 
Loris  told  of  so  many  "maids  of  Saragossa,"  in 
Macedonia  and  the  Balkans,  that  I  had  to  recede 
from  my  heroics  over  the  little  Siberian.  They 
cited  so  many  cases  that  it  seemed  as  though 
Russian  women  were  all  "warriors  bold."  Several 
of  the  battery  commanders  had  their  families 
living  with  them  in  the  high  forts  around  Port 
Arthur.  The  officers  said  it  was  safer  there ;  they 
wanted  their  families  with  them,  if  anything  hap- 
pened ;  and  the  air  was  better  on  the  hills  through 
the  summer.  Children  lived  in  the  forts ;  romped 
in  the  casements  and  galleries,  and  around  the 
magazines ;  played  tag  over  the  cannons,  and  got 
in  the  way  of  the  gunners  during  action.  They 
were  delighted  with  the  novelties  of  warfare, 
wanted  to  work  the  machine  guns,  to  see  the  fish 
torpedoes  swim  in  the  air,  and  to  turn  the  search- 
239 


240         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

lights.  They  waited  up  to  watch  the  star  rockets 
and  parachutes,  as  if  for  illuminated  fetes.  There 
was  also  a  sergeant's  wife,  who  wore  men's  clothes 
and  fought  as  a  soldier  at  one  of  the  forts.  She 
was  an  expert  shot,  and  when  her  husband  was 
killed  she  stayed  at  the  sights  in  the  trenches  until 
she  had  killed  one  hundred  and  seventeen  Japanese, 
before  she  herself  was  shot  by  a  Japanese  sharp- 
shooter. 

Besides  the  titled  women  who  went  to  Siberia 
and  devotedly  did  all  the  routine  work  of  their 
Red  Cross  and  zemstvo  hospitals,  I  hear  of  mounted 
Red  Cross  nurses,  hardy  Siberian  women,  who 
scour  the  battlefields  for  the  wounded.  I  think 
Russia  will  wake  up  to  and  discover  the  real  value 
of  Siberia  after  this  war,  as  England  learned  to 
appreciate  her  colonies  after  the  Boer  war. 

I  marvelled  at  this  presence  of  women  in  the 
battlefield,  until  Von  Woerffel,  not  to  let  his  arm 
of  the  service  be  left  out  of  the  honours,  said  that 
each  battleship  carried  Red  Cross  sisters  of 
charity,  and  that,  when  the  fleet  made  its  fiasco  of 
a  sortie,  August  10th,  it  had  not  only  carried  the 
usual  nurses  on  the  ships,  but  the  wives  of  many 
officers  who  volunteered  for  nurse's  duties,  in  order 
to  escape  to  Vladivostok.  I  could  hardly  believe 
this.  Certainly  there  is  no  such  Pinafore  busi- 
ness in  the  English  navy ;  for  I  know  my  English 
uncle  could  not  take  my  aunt  with  him  on  his  own 


DAILY  LIFE  241 

gunboat  from  Cowes  to  Deauville — a  few  hours' 
trip  on  a  summer's  day.  But  Von  Woerffel  assures 
me  that  it  is  so,  and  that  the  commander  of  the 
Peresviet,  who  is  at  Ide-bude-machi,  can  assure  me 
that  his  wife  was  on  board  during  all  that  10th 
of  August  flight,  fight,  and  retreat.  She  was  down 
below,  while  the  big  guns  were  firing,  and  Japa- 
nese shells  were  striking.  Think  of  it !  What  a 
place  for  a  woman!  And  think  of  the  discipline 
maintained  by  an  Admiral  who  would  permit  a 
Pinafore  party  on  a  battleship  in  action — or  at 
any  time !  No  wonder  our  navy  has  made  such  a 
pitiable  showing  all  through  the  war;  that  this 
lagging  Baltic  fleet  imagined  Japanese  torpedoes 
in  the  North  Sea,  and  was  shooting  at  shadows 
all  the  way  from  Libau  to  the  Channel.  If  we  get 
out  of  this  without  a  war  with  England,  we  will  be 
fortunate.  It's  a  mercy  Lord  Charles  did  not 
attack,  when  he  had  them  all  in  one  fleet  near 
Gibraltar.  We  of  the  army  do  not  take  the 
Russian  navy  seriously  any  more.  I  asked  a  Port 
Arthur  man  what  chance  Rojestvensky  had 
against  Admiral  Togo.  "The  same  chance  exactly 
as  if  he  came  in  forty-four  steam  launches,  cargo- 
lighters,  or  Volga  barges.  For  the  good  of  Russia 
and  himself  he  had  better  turn  around  now  and 
go  home,  with  a  whole  skin  and  all  his  ships  above 
water.  Rojestvensky  is  a  fussy,  old  martinet; 
his  officers  all  hate  him  and  would  not  obey  his 


242          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

orders  half  the  time ;  certainly  not  after  that  devil 
of  a  Togo  began  to  be  noisy  and  unpleasant  with 
his  infernal  prearrangements.  Sea  power  is  not 
in  our  line.  It  is  not  in  the  genius  of  our  race  to 
go  on  the  water.  No,  nor  in  it  either;  as  you  see 
here  in  Matsuyama,  when  sick  and  well  have  to  be 
pushed  into  the  baths  once  a  week.  That's  another 
count  in  the  Japanese  contempt.  They  despise 
us  because  we  are  beaten,  because  we  do  not  commit 
suicide;  and  because  our  Cossacks  are  so  dirty, 
and  do  not  like  to  bathe  in  boiling  water  every 
night." 

Every  able-bodied  civilian  in  Port  Arthur  had 
to  do  military  duty  with  the  Volunteers,  and  there 
are  many  tales  told  of  what  happened  on  this 
account  in  "Stoessel's  satrapy."  Even  the  mana- 
ger of  the  Russo-Chinese  bank  was  ordered  to 
duty.  He  protested,  and  so  Stoessel  said :  "Very 
well,  I  give  you  charge  of  the  abattoirs."  Abat- 
toirs supplying  horseflesh  only !  All  Port  Arthur 
roared  with  laughter,  and  the  volunteer  protested. 
"Then,"  said  Stoessel,  "you  can  report  to  Colonel 
Yermoloff  for  duty  in  the  trenches  on  Two- 
Hundred-and-Three-Metre  Hill." 

After  the  surrender,  the  Volunteers  had  to 
answer  the  roll-call  like  any  of  the  regular  troops, 
be  counted,  and  march  the  six  miles  to  the  railway 
station.  Among  these  Volunteers  were  many  secret 
agents  of  revolutionary  societies.  The  Siberian 


DAILY  LIFE  243 

army  has  many  such  agitators,  and  here  in  deten- 
tion, they  distribute  their  revolutionary  literature 
freely.  Grievsky  thinks  the  Japanese  should  not 
permit  that,  and  gets  furious  when  Vladimir  says 
his  point  is  out  of  all  rational  order;  that  of 
course  the  Japanese  will  allow  the  captives  liberty 
in  that  respect,  as  Japanese  soldiers  can  read  any- 
thing they  please.  Even  in  war  time,  their  Japa- 
nese temporary  censorship  of  the  press  does  not 
equal  what  we  have  in  Russia  in  time  of  peace; 
and  there  are  no  books  barred  out,  to  judge  of 
what  I  saw  in  the  bookstores  at  Kobe;  and  any 
books  we  order  they  send  us. 

The  Lafcadio  Hearn  books  that  I  ordered  for 
holiday  gifts  were  brought  to  the  barracks  by  one 
of  the  headquarters  clerks,  who  did  so  because  he 
was  anxious  to  tell  Vladimir  that  he  had  often 
seen  that  great  genius  when  he,  the  clerk,  was  a 
student  in  the  Imperial  University  at  Tokyo.  "He 
was  my  revered  teacher,"  said  the  youth  proudly, 
and  we  made  the  most  of  his  visit. 

We  had  a  laugh,  too,  at  Akimoff,  who  went 
through  the  ward  as  interpreter  for  the  Protestant 
missionaries,  distributing  tracts  and  picture  books 
to  the  invalids.  The  children  in  the  mission  schools 
in  the  treaty  ports  have  made  these  picture  scrap- 
books  by  thousands  for  the  Japanese  soldiers  in 
hospital,  and  these  have  now  greatly  diverted  our 
poor  Cossacks,  to  many  of  whom  pictures  of 


244         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

European  life  are  quite  as  foreign  as  to  the  Japa- 
nese. But  the  tracts !  They  have  been  provided 
to  win  poor  ignorant  Russians  away  from  the 
"gross  superstitions  and  idolatry"  of  the  Orthodox 
Church!  Some  of  the  tracts  in  Russian  text,  en- 
titled as  temperance  lectures,  proved  to  be  revo- 
lutionary literature,  and  were  promptly  burned 
by  the  horrified  missionaries.  Then  the  Japanese 
authorities  abruptly  shut  down  on  the  activities 
of  a  supposed  philanthropist  who  was  at  the 
bottom  of  this  way  of  reaching  our  stupid 
mujiks.  This  terrorist  agent,  masquerading  as 
a  benevolent  old  doctor,  was  even  offering  to  take 
to  America  at  the  end  of  the  war  any  real  cultiva- 
tors of  land  who  would  settle  in  the  further  states. 
If  they  would  only  go  with  him,  how  well  rid 
Russia  would  be  of  the  lot,  and  how  well  it  would 
serve  America!  Her  philanthropists  got  the 
Doukhobors,  and  they  have  quite  enough  of  them, 
I  hear. 

I  go  to  the  English  service  once  a  week  at  the 
mission  house,  and  the  officers  are  now  arranging 
a  little  chapel  at  the  hospital,  where  the  Japanese 
Catechists  of  the  Greek  Church  will  hold  services 
regularly.  Hitherto,  they  have  visited  from  ward 
to  ward,  and  confessions  and  burial  services  have 
been  their  chief  occupation.  There  is  much  scepti- 
cism, of  course,  wherever  two  or  three  really  edu- 
cated Russians  are  gathered  together ;  and  Nimi- 


DAILY  LIFE  245 

doff,  who  is  blunt  and  frank  to  a  degree,  has  a  way 
of  setting  fire  to  the  irreligious  opinions  of  the 
others.  After  one  long  bout,  when  he  had  led  in 
denouncing  the  Church,  as  it  now  exists  in  Russia 
— all  mummery — simply,  an  instrument  for  extort- 
ing money  from  and  coercing  the  ignorant — they 
nearly  reached  the  point  of  putting  Christianity 
itself  aside  as  an  outlived  delusion. 

"Oh !  if  the  Procurator-General  could  only  hear 
you !"  Esper  exclaimed. 

"Oh!  Damn  the  Procurator-General!  The  old 
fiend !  He  belongs  to  the  Middle  Ages  anyhow. 
He  would  burn  recalcitrants  and  unbelievers  at  the 
stake  to-day,  if  he  dared.  His  prison  for  priests 
is  worse  than  burning;  and  there  is  Kavkaz  and 
the  Trans-Baikal  for  the  others.  I  will  distribute 
all  the  Protestant  tracts  I  can  get  hold  of  here. 
I  think  it  would  be  a  good  work,  a  real  missionary 
service,  to  convert  the  imprisoned  army  in  Japan 
to  any  true  Christian  religion." 

"But  what  did  you  do  in  camp,  with  your 
troops,  if  you  feel  that  way  ?"  I  asked. 

"Oh !  it  is  part  of  the  tactics  and  drill — military 
regulations.  I  put  my  men  through  the  Mass  and 
service  just  like  any  other  manreuvre.  Pile  up  the 
drums  and  make  an  altar  for  the  priests;  cross 
myself,  just  as  I  salute  another  officer ;  habit — 
habit — I  have  often  made  the  sign  of  the  cross 
when  I  meant  to  salute,  on  the  Nevsky,  and  often 


246         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

saluted,  absent-mindedly,  when  I  should  have 
crossed.  It  is  automatic — that's  all  there  is  in 
it.  We  kneel  with  our  heads  on  our  sword-hilts, 
and  the  men's  heads  on  the  rifle-butts  at  service 
in  camp,  and  the  priest  chatters  lines  that  my  men 
surely  do  not  understand ;  nor  do  the  popes  them- 
selves, half  the  time.  We  kiss  the  book  and  march 
back,  keeping  step  with  the  feet,  crossing  ourselves 
with  our  hands — both  automatic.  We  march  to 
battle  crossing  ourselves,  because  all  the  rest  do. 
Some  say  their  prayers  honestly,  I  suppose,  but  not 
many  of  my  class.  And  who  has  respect  for  a 
pope  anywhere,  or  even  for  a  pope's  son?  And 
how  Christian  is  it  for  our  popes  to  lead  the  attack 
with  the  crucifix,  at  the  front  ?  Ah !  don't  talk  to 
me !  Our  beggar  of  a  pope  at  Telissu  was  as  keen 
on  the  fight,  had  as  real  a  blood-thirst  as  any 
Cossack.  He  screamed  and  shouted,  and  waved 
his  big  cross ;  and  when  our  men  broke,  he  beat 
them  with  the  crucifix,  drove  them  back,  made 
them  stand  their  ground.  We  never  could  have 
retreated  in  such  good  order,  if  it  had  not  been 
for  that  fighting  pope.  He  and  his  cross  saved 
us  for  once,  even  if  he  had  broken  one  arm  of  the 
cross,  when  a  Cossack  dodged,  and  the  holy  club 
came  down  on  a  rock.  To  the  devil  with 
Pobedonostseff ,  and  his  whole  bigoted  tribe !" 


CHAPTER  XXIX 
THE  EXILED  STUDENT 

Friday,  February  3rd. 

T  WAS  down  in  the  street,  buying  cotton  cloth 
for  Andrew  Y 's  tailor  shop  this  morn- 
ing, when  I  heard  a  cry  of:  "Matushka!  Ma- 
tushka!  Tyotushka!  You!  You!  Here!  In 
Japan !" 

Of  all  the  surprises  I  have  had,  none  equals  this 
of  finding  Sandy  von  Rathroff,  my  own  godchild, 
among  the  Port  Arthur  officers.  "For  Heaven's 
sake,  Sandy,  tell  me  how,  how  you  got  here? 
Where  is  your  uniform?  What  are  you  doing 
here  ?  How  did  you  get  away  ?  In  mercy's  name ! 
This  surpasses  all.  Oh!  You  mauvais  sujet! 
Here!  of  all  places!  Oh!  your  poor  mother, 
now " 

Sandy  stood  there  smiling,  as  happily  as  if  it 
were  all  a  fete,  while  I  was  quite  unnerved  by 
surprises  of  so  many  kinds.  The  moon-faced 
sergeant,  who  was  escorting  his  little  flock  around 
the  shops,  came  up  at  the  sound  of  our  excited 
voices,  and  his  presence  brought  me  to  my  senses 
enough  to  explain  to  him  in  full  that  this  was  my 
347 


248         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

long-lost  nephew,  whom  we  had  all  considered  dead 
in  Siberia.  We  had,  truly. 

"Tell  him  the  whole  thing.  He's  a  good  sort, 
different  from  the  other  Japanese  at  our  place. 
They  say  they  are  better  to  the  Jews,  the  Poles, 
and  the  disloyal  ones ;  and  I  want  any  credit  I 
can  get  on  that  last  score."  When  I  had  talked 
the  sergeant  into  security  we  sat  down  on  the  red 
benches,  and  Sandy  told  me  rapidly,  in  German, 
all  that  had  happened  to  him  since  his  exile. 

"Yes,  aunt,  I  am  more  unreconcilable  than  ever. 
I  shall  always  be  the  enemy  of  Nicholas  Alexandro- 
vitch  and  all  his  following,  although  I  have  worn 
his  uniform  and  taken  his  pay.  Very  small  pay, 
aunt,  only  sixty  roubles  a  month — less  than  a 
Japanese  sous-lieutenant  gets.  Well,  tyotushka, 
since  Mr.  Stripes,  that  is  what  we  call  that 
sergeant  of  ours,  since  he  will  let  us  talk,  I  must 
tell  you  all  I  can  now,  for  I  shall  not  get  out  for 
a  walk  for  another  week.  There  are  so  many  of 
us  in  the  temple  and  so  few  sergeants  to  chaperon 
us  as  we  walk  abroad.  Oh !  it  is  quite  like  a  young 
girls'  school,  a  convent  brood  taking  a  gentle 
promenade.  'Baissez  vos  yeux,  mesdemoiselles,' 
the  French  governess  used  to  say  to  my  sisters 
when  they  passed  the  Yacht  Club.  Oh,  dear !  will 
I  ever  be  there  again  ? 

"I  shall  come  to  the  hospital  at  once — as  soon 
as  they  will  let  me,  I  mean.  To  think  that  you 


THE  EXILED  STUDENT  249 

are  here!  But,  to  begin  with  myself;  now,  ma 
tante.  After  I  was  seized,  with  the  students  who 
had  been  in  Kazan  Cathedral — while  I  had  not  been 
in  there  at  all — I  was  shut  up  in  the  fortress  for 
weeks.  You  know  how  my  family  worked  for  my 
release.  But  old  Von  Plehve,  curses  to  his  soul, 
and  all  his  agents,  swore  against  me,  and  I  went 
with  the  rota  to  Irkutsk.  They  assigned  me  to 

the  town  of near .     It  is  supposed  to  be 

on  the  railway  line;  but  it  isn't  by  eighteen  versts. 
Well,  I  had  to  live ;  and  the  best  thing  was  to  get 
on  with  the  authorities  so  well  that  I  could  escape 
— get  over  to  China  in  some  way.  I  taught  school. 
I  took  the  classes  away  from  the  drunken  pope, 
and  taught  the  little  Siberians  to  read  and  write, 
some  arithmetic,  and  some  geography.  The  pope 
sobered  up  now  and  then,  and  told  them  Church 
history. 

"Ugh !  What  discomforts  !  What  hideous  sur- 
roundings !  What  people !  What  drear  winter 
nights  I  passed !  I  was  desperate  many  a  time. 
But  I  held  my  tongue,  made  friends  with  the 
authorities,  and  saved  every  kopeck  I  could  of 
what  the  family  sent  me,  and  all  I  could  earn.  I 
should  need  money  when  I  could  escape.  So  I  had 
one  thousand  roubles  on  me  when  the  war  began. 
And  I  danced  a  tarantelle  of  joy.  In  the  con- 
fusion, I  could  surely  get  away  and  make  my  way 
into  China,  I  thought. 


250         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

"Our  governor  advised  me  to  volunteer  for 
military  service  in  Manchuria,  as  I  would  be  made 
a  sub-lieutenant  at  the  start,  see  some  good  fight- 
ing, and  get  amnesty  after  the  war.  We  expected, 
you  know,  a  quick  march  down  the  coast,  and  to 
do  all  our  little  fighting  in  Japan.  I  wish  you 
could  have  seen  the  troops  I  commanded!  Raw 
Siberian  infantry,  of  course,  for  me.  Such  a  lot 
of  cutthroat  brutes  you  never  saw.  No  jail-yard 
of  criminals  could  match  my  Siberian  riflemen. 
All  had  bullet  heads  and  retreating  foreheads — 
prognathous  skulls,  and  nothing  in  them — eyes 
like  elephant's  eyes.  Ugh !  I  am  glad  to  be  away 
from  the  sight  of  them.  Thank  the  saints  they 
are  sent  somewhere  else  in  Japan,  and  I  don't  have 
to  see  those  two-legged  dolts  any  more,  and  bother 
my  head  with  their  soup  and  cartridges.  I  don't 
know  that  they  hated  me  as  I  loathed  them.  Poor 
things !  They  were  not  to  blame  that  they  wore 
the  Czar's  uniform  and  carried  his  gun.  They  are 
dragged  off  at  the  end  of  the  knout  for  conscrip- 
tion or  mobilisation,  and  treated  like  cattle. 
Kanonen-f utter  they  are.  I  am  not  sure  they  have 
souls.  They  seemed  no  higher  in  the  scale  to  me 
than  horses  or  camels — camels  that  talk,  and  can 
scratch — and  get  drunk,  if  there's  any  bad  vodka 
around. 

"Well,  they  sent  me  to  Port  Arthur,  and  there 
I  stayed  from  April  to  the  end  of  the  siege.  I 


THE  EXILED  STUDENT  251 

intended  to  surrender  as  soon  as  I  could  get  near 
the  enemy,  but  I  never  had  the  chance.  My 
trenches  were  never  near  the  outposts ;  and  I  think 
my  men  suspected  me.  Two  others  got  across  and 
surrendered:  but  no  such  luck  for  me.  I  had  to 
endure  all  those  horrors  and  discomforts.  Ugh ! 
the  smells  in  those  trenches !  the  corpse  smell  in  the 
air,  everywhere,  all  the  time !  And  the  hospitals !  I 
had  to  go  to  look  up  my  wounded  men,  in  decency's 
name.  I  wish  I  could  forget  it  all.  It  sickens  me 
now,  whenever  I  think  of  the  hospitals  beside  our 
barracks.  And  the  noise!  I  believe  that  was 
worst  of  all.  The  roar  of  those  Japanese  shells! 
Ach  Gott!  It  was  like  the  end  of  the  world.  A 
thousand  thunderclaps  in  one.  Night  and  day, 
it  was  one  bang-bang  and  roar-r-r!  It  took  one 
of  these  Japanese  shells  to  make  the  stone-deaf 
to  hear.  And  then!  Go  up  on  the  highest  forts 
and  look,  and  you  couldn't  see  the  first  sign  of  a 
Japanese  or  his  outworks.  Not  a  gun,  nor  an  em- 
bankment, not  a  trench,  nor  a  line  of  earth,  nor  a 
sand-bag  in  sight.  The  pigmies  would  come  up 
out  of  the  ground  to  attack,  and  come  on  until 
they  could  push  grenades  in  the  mouths  of  our  big 
guns  in  the  casements.  In  all  the  world,  there  was 
never  anything  like  it.  It  was  uncanny.  Nothing 
in  sight,  only  shells  shooting  over  from  the  hills 
and  dropping  down  out  of  the  sky.  No  fort,  no 
gun,  no  gunner  anywhere  in  sight.  Somewhere  on 


252         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

a  hill-top,  there  was  a  little  gnome  in  a  pit,  with  a 
telephone  wire,  telling  his  gunners  to  fire  higher  or 
lower,  so  many  degrees  to  east  or  west.  It  gave 
me  the  creeps. 

"I  did  not  admire  the  Russian  commanders, — 
except  Kondrachenko.  He  was  a  man.  I  would 
much  rather  have  been  with  that  old  hero,  Nogi, 
fighting  on  the  Japanese  side.  And  then,  one  day, 
Stoessel  handed  us  over.  Not  a  word  did  we  have 
to  say,  any  more  than  my  Siberians  had  had  to 
say  as  to  whether  they  would  like  to  be  soldiers  or 
not.  I  had  full  mufti  always  ready  at  Port 
Arthur,  and  I  burned  my  uniform,  all  my  peacock- 
coloured  clothes. 

"We  live  in  a  temple  now.  Queer  notion !  I 
should  think  they  would  consider  it  a  desecration 
to  have  Russians  in  the  house  of  Buddha.  Prob- 
ably they  will  burn  them  down,  purify  by  fire, 
when  we  are  gone!  When  we  are  gone!  Yes,  I 
wish  I  knew  when  this  stage  would  be  over  in  my 
career. 

"Here  I  am  in  Japan !  herded  in  with  a  lot  of 
men  I  despise,  with  not  as  much  liberty  as  I  had 
in  my  Siberian  town.  And  when  the  war  ends,  I 
suppose  I  will  be  counted  off  like  cargo  again,  and 
shipped  back  where  I  came  from.  There's  no  use 
in  trying  to  do  anything  here.  It's  only  when 
they  ship  us  to  Europe,  that  I  can  get  away.  All 
my  efforts  now  are  towards  holding  my  tongue. 


THE  EXILED  STUDENT  253 

I  have  asked  to  have  a  teacher  of  Japanese,  but  we 
are  so  crowded  at  Shin-so- ji  that  there  is  no  room 
for  a  teacher  unless  he  shoves  some  Buddha  off  his 
pedestal  in  the  graveyard." 

Vladimir's  surprise  was  as  great  as  my  own, 
but  he  disliked  the  cold-blooded,  calculating  dis- 
loyalty of  the  young  exile.  "He  is  not  a  loyal 
Russian,"  said  Vladimir  severely,  and  at  that  I 
laughed.  "How  could  he  be  ?  I  don't  believe  I  am 
one  myself  any  more  either." 

Since  the  chief-surgeon  left,  the  whole  atmos- 
phere has  changed,  and  we  chafe  under  many 
petty  annoyances.  Suddenly,  there  came  an  order 
to  remove  the  cots,  the  wooden  beds,  from  the 
wards — from  all  but  the  officers'  wards.  Many  of 
the  sick  ones  cried  and  protested,  and  all  the 
nurses  have  been  changed  around  to  other  wards, 
too,  to  the  great  sorrow  and  real  injury  of  their 
patients.  Nesan  came  from  her  new  ward,  to  see 
if  I  would  not  explain  to  her  sick  Cossacks  what 
was  to  be  done,  and  quiet  them  a  little. 

"If  you  will  tell  me  why  it  is  done,  I  will  come," 
I  said.  Nesan  was  embarrassed  and  plainly  un- 
happy. "Oh!  Okasama,  it  is  the  work  of  these 
small  new  officers  in  the  chancery.  They  say 
Japanese  soldiers  lie  on  the  floor,  and  so  Russian 
soldiers  must  lie  on  the  floor.  But  it  is  not  so  at 
Zentsuji.  There  every  Japanese  soldier,  hundreds, 
thousands,  all  have  wooden  beds,  like  the  Cossacks 


254         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

had  yesterday.  And  so  it  is  at  Hiroshima,  too. 
They  are  taking  the  beds  up  the  hill  to  the  Shiro, 
and  Japanese  soldiers  are  carrying." 

And  truly  a  procession  of  recruits  were  toiling 
up  to  the  chateau  with  the  hundreds  of  high  cots, 
and  hundreds  of  our  sick  men  are  crying  and 
whimpering  like  children  to-night.  It  is  only  a 
little  piece  of  stupidity  and  assertiveness  on  the 
part  of  some  petty  official,  but  it  is  as  unkind  as  it 
is  senseless — a  mere  parade  of  authority.  It  is  the 
old  story  of  the  parvenu  in  power,  the  upstart 
in  control,  the  beggar  on  horseback,  that  we  have 
evidence  enough  of  in  Russia.  Our  zemstvos  and 
any  estate  owners,  who  try  to  do  good  for  the  vil- 
lagers and  peasants,  constantly  meet  this  same 
spirit. 

The  new  surgeon  is  very  eminent  and  skilful, 
they  say.  He  speaks  German,  of  course,  for  the 
Japanese  believe  medical  science  was  evolved  and 
can  only  be  taught  in  Germany.  But  he  is  not 
the  same  as  our  old  chief -surgeon,  that  prefix 
chevalier,  that  fine  flower  of  Bushido. 

"Yes,  he  and  General  Nogi.  I  put  them  in  the 
first  rank,  with  any  officer  and  gentleman  in 
Europe.  These  others?  No!  There  is  not  a  real, 
a  true  gentleman,  as  Europe  understands  the 
word,  among  them.  Only  Nogi  and  Kikuchi  to 
redeem  these  forty  millions,"  is  the  way  the  cap- 
tive officers  talk.  They  are  bitter  against  all  in 


THE  EXILED  STUDENT  255 

command  in  Matsuyama;  and  since  the  sword 
incident,  there  have  been  other  regrettable  affairs. 
Blows  have  been  exchanged,  and  the  Prussian 
martinet  of  a  commandant  has  even  struck  un- 
armed captives,  defenceless  prisoners,  with  his 
sword. 


CHAPTER  XXX 
THE  NIGHT  LODGERS 

Saturday,  February  4th. 

visitors'  day  I  went  to  Sandy's  quarters, 
and  I  must  own  that  he  has  a  depressing 
milieu  at  Shin-so- ji.  The  forty  officers  are  crowded 
together  in  the  temple,  and  their  exercise  ground, 
the  graveyard,  is  more  closely  crowded  with 
grey  stone  monuments,  tablets,  and  lanterns.  The 
ranking  engineer  officers  from  Port  Arthur  are 
stowed  like  steerage  passengers  in  the  upper  part 
of  the  temple  library.  They  try  to  make  merry 
over  it,  those  six  big  Russians,  who  sleep  and  live 
where  one  thin  shadow  of  a  priest  used  to  read  and 
meditate.  Sandy  and  the  younger  officers  have 
bunks  in  the  anteroom,  and  their  interpreter  is  the 
worst  I  have  yet  encountered.  Taciturn  and  sus- 
picious, and  woodenly  stupid,  he  watches  them  all 
the  time,  as  if  espionage  and  not  translation  were 
his  duty.  He  peers  over  their  shoulders  to  see 
what  they  read  and  write,  noses  in  to  see  what  they 
are  doing,  and  has  his  ears  pricked-up  listening 
to  all  they  say.  And  how  they  loathe  him!  And 
256 


THE  NIGHT  LODGERS  257 

how  they  long  to  wring  his  long,  thin  neck,  and 
to  beat  him  with  their  fists !  If  they  only  dared ! 

The  gloomy  interpreter  stuck  to  my  elbow, 
while  Sandy  showed  me  his  quarters — his  own  bed 
in  a  big  closet  in  the  wall — and,  when  the  officers 
in  the  cabinet-de-luxe  gave  me  a  chair  and  they 
sat  on  their  rolled-up  mattresses,  M.  1'Interprete 
stood  near  the  door  and  craned  his  neck.  The 
wrath  of  my  hosts  was  at  boiling  point,  and  I  spent 
my  time  assuaging  them,  in  German.  "At  least," 
I  said,  "the  war  will  soon  be  over.  With  Port 
Arthur  gone,  Manchuria  is  nothing  to  us  any 
more;  and  after  the  next  big  battle,  whether  we 
lose  or  win,  there  will  be  peace.  The  other  nations 
of  Europe  are  getting  frightened  lest  they  be 
drawn  in ;  and  the  bankers,  who  rule  the  world, 
are  opposed  to  continuing  this  disturbance  of  the 
Bourses.  Be  patient !" 

"Bah !  Peace  now  ?  No  !  A  thousand  times, 
no.  I  would  rather  stay  here,  in  this  little  box, 
four  years,  ten  years,  rather  die  here,  than  have 
the  war  end  now.  There  can  be  no  end  of  the  war, 
until  we  recover  Port  Arthur  and  wipe  out  the 
stain  of  Stoessel's  surrender.  This  is  only  a  colo- 
nial war.  Russia  itself  is  not  affected.  We  fought 
a  forty-seven  years'  war  in  the  Caucasus.  We  can 
fight  a  longer  war  in  Manchuria.  No.  No  peace 
until  there  are  Russian  victories.  I  would  rather 
stay  here  forever,  than  go  free,  than  live — with 


258         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

Russia  a  vanquished  power.  Vanquished  by  these 
Japanese !  beaten  by  an  army  of  those !"  pointing 
to  a  bow-legged  old  soldier,  in  patched  and  faded 
khaki  clothes,  standing  at  the  gate. 

Until  last  week  forty  more  officers  slept  on  the 
floor  of  the  temple  and  a  dozen  or  more  slept  on 
the  broad  shelves  at  the  sides,  where  the  images 
of  the  five  hundred  Rakans  used  to  stand.  Those 
in  the  library  used  to  jeer  down  to  the  officers  in 
Na  Dnie,  or  Le  Font,  as  they  called  it,  after 
Gorky's  sketch  of  the  vagabonds'  night  lodgings 
in  Moscow. 

Esper  came  before  I  got  away,  and  Madame 
P also  arrived.  She  can  come  to  see  her  hus- 
band here  on  the  regular  two  days  of  the  week 
when  general  visitors  are  allowed,  and  visit  him 
in  the  chancery,  or  out  in  the  graveyard.  On 
sunny  days,  they  put  the  samovar  on  the  tomb- 
stones and  have  al  fresco  tea.  Once  a  week,  the 
captive  may  spend  four  hours  with  his  family. 
Soon  they  will  let  him  leave  the  temple  and  live  with 
his  family  entirely.  She  is  a  Lutheran  from  the 
Baltic  provinces,  so  naturally  enjoys  the  good 
will  of  the  Japanese. 

An  officer  at  Esper's  temple  collared  the 
interpreter,  cuffed  his  ears,  and  gave  him  the  good 
shaking  he  probably  deserved;  but,  for  striking 
an  official,  the  young  hot-head  is  imprisoned  for 
three  weeks. 


THE  NIGHT  LODGERS  259 

"The  French  prisoners  in  Wiirtemburg  were 
shot  for  that  very  thing  in  1870,"  I  said,  "and 
they  were  forced  to  work  on  fortifications  all  along 
the  German  frontier,  as  you  know.  They  slept 
on  the  ground  in  tents,  in  rain  and  snow;  they 
were  herded  in  dark,  damp  casemates  of  the 
fortress  at  Ulm;  and  the  French  soldiers  died  in 
droves  everywhere  they  were  kept  in  Germany, 
because  of  their  unsanitary  surroundings,  and  for 
want  of  proper,  of  sufficient  food  and  clothing. 
Germans  themselves,  and  all  Europe  had  to 
organise  relief  work  to  save  them.  Now  the  Japa- 
nese, you  must  admit,  by  contrast  with  what  hap- 
pened in  1870,  are  not  as  inhuman,  as  uncivilised, 
as  unchristian  as  the  people  of  your  friend,  the 
Kaiser,  are  they?  You  are  well  off.  You  are 
lapped  in  luxury,  by  comparison;  so,  give  the 
devil  his  due,  Esper." 

"Yes,  I  can  give  the  devil  his  due  all  right,  but 
I  cannot  give  anything  to  the  Japanese.  Don't 
ask  me  to  try.  You  are  not  a  loyal  Russian  to 
defend  the  enemy.  No  Russian  ought  to  think  and 
reason  as  you  do.  For  Russia,  right  or  wrong! 
is  our  watchword.  And  Holy  Russia  is  always 
right,  against  pagans,  heathens,  Buddhists,  and 
idolaters." 

"Andrew  Y knows  a  chateau  in  France, 

where  one  of  the  ex-votos  in  the  chapel  is  a  piece 
of  the  black  bread — half  straw  too — that  the 


260         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

father  of  the  chatelaine  had  served  to  him  for 
months  in  the  fortress  of  Magdeburg  in  1870. 
Now,  you  have  good  bread  here,  do  you  not?"  I 
asked. 

"Yes,  better  than  we  had  at  Mukden." 

"Well,  then,  the  Japanese  feed  you  better  in 
this  little  faraway  provincial  town  of  Matsuyama, 
than  the  Prussians  could  or  would  feed  the  old 

Comte  de in  that  large  city  of  Germany.  And 

they  do  this  when  The  Hague  ordains  that  you 
should  be  treated,  as  regards  food,  quarters,  and 
clothing,  precisely  on  the  same  footing  as  the 
troops  of  the  government  which  captured  you. 
You  should  be  living  on  fish  and  rice,  pickled  plums 
and  da-ikon,  by  the  convention  of  The  Hague, 
should  you  not?  You  have  good  white  bread — 
made  from  the  most  expensive  American  flour,  the 
missionaries  tell  me — soup,  meat,  vegetables,  tea. 
You  have  clean,  hot  food  three  times  a  day;  you 
have  a  clean  bed,  abundant  covering  and  clothing, 
hot  baths,  more  fresh  air  than  you  want,  and  a 
chance  to  walk  in  a  narrow  graveyard  at  any 
time,  haven't  you  ?  And  so  has  every  Cossack  here, 
hasn't  he?" 

"Yes,  truly." 

"Then  the  Japanese  are  kinder  to  their  pris- 
oners than  the  Germans?" 

"Yes,"  he  said  slowly,  while  his  colleagues  roared 
with  laughter  at  his  discomfiture.  "But  then,  you 


THE  NIGHT  LODGERS  261 

see,  they  have  to.  The  conventions  of  Geneva  and 
The  Hague  made  sure  that  prisoners  of  war  should 
never  again  be  neglected  and  so  shamefully  treated 
as  the  French  were  in  1870.  They  wouldn't  dare 
not  feed  and  keep  us  well." 

"But,  Esper,  it  was  after  Geneva  that  Skobeleff 
took  Plevna.  What  happened  to  the  Turkish 
prisoners  there  ?  Did  you  ever  hear  ?" 

"Ah !  Bah !  Yes.  But  Port  Arthur  was  not 
Plevna." 

"No.  Fortunately  so.  You  were  not  all  driven 
out  into  the  open,  snowy  field  and  herded  there 
three  days  and  nights  without  food  or  shelter,  nor 
kept  in  tents  on  scant  rations  for  another  week 
after  the  surrender,  were  you?" 

"Good  Lord,  no !" 

"The  Japanese  have  not  forced  the  prisoners 
to  labour  on  new  fortifications  under  the  guns  of 
the  fortress,  have  they?" 

"Not  here  in  Matsuyama." 

"No,  nor  elsewhere.  Now  you  have  virtually 
admitted  that  in  these  things  the  Japanese  are 
more  humane,  more  civilised,  more  enlightened, 
more  Christian  than  the  Germans,  have  you  not?" 

"Ah-h!  No!  No!  Not  yet.  Have  mercy! 
Madame !" 

"And  you  admit  that  they  observe  the  Geneva 
convention  better  than  the  Russians  did  at  Plevna, 
do  you  not?" 


262          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

"Ah!  Ah!  I  cannot,  I  will  not  say  'Yes,'  to 
that.  You  are  all  wrong  in  the  way  you  approach 
your  argument.  I  suppose  I  could  love  my  jailers 
in  time — love  the  sentries  even,  if  they  were  not 
all  bow-legged.  Love  the  interpreter  even,  if  he 
had  thin  lips,  and  round  eyes  set  straight  in  his 
face.  Until  then,  no,  never." 


CHAPTER  XXXI 
THE  DULL  ROUTINE 

Sunday,  February  5th. 

T  ASKED  one  Port  Arthur  officer  what  was  the 
"*"  best  thing  he  had  seen  during  the  war,  the 
thing  that  impressed  him  most  with  the  goodness 
of  the  world  and  the  human  race  in  it.  He  said: 
"The  absence  of  the  Japanese  flag  at  Port  Arthur. 
We  never  saw  it,  after  the  surrender,  until  we  got 
down  to  Dalny.  The  Russian  flag  came  down 
and  the  flagstaffs  and  buildings  were  left  bare. 
We  lived  on  in  our  same  houses,  waited  on  by  our 
same  servants,  and  the  men  remained  in  their  bar- 
racks, until  time  to  march  to  the  Dalny  train. 
Some  one  rowed  over  in  the  night  and  hung  black 
streamers  on  the  Pobieda's  [Victory's]  wreck. 
Poor  Pobieda!  Pobieda!  What  a  name  of  irony! 
It  was  General  Nogi's  special  order  that  no  flag 
should  be  raised  until  Stoessel  had  left  Port 
Arthur.  There  was  much  of  Bushido  with  Nogi 
at  Port  Arthur.  It  is  a  pity  we  meet  so  little  in 
Matsuyama." 

Tears  came  to  my  eyes  to  think  of  such  nobility 
of  feeling,  such  chivalry,  such  considerate  regard 


264         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

for  a  foe.  Rare  old  Nogi!  best  exponent  of 
Bushido.  I  cannot  imagine  Stoessel  doing  this, 
had  the  situations  been  reversed — nor  Kuro- 
patkin. 

We  have  news  lately  of  riots  in  Russia,  and 
turmoil  in  many  provinces.  We  are  sorely  puzzled 
as  to  how  much  truth  is  in  it;  how  much  more 
serious  the  usual  winter  disturbances  are  this  year 
than  in  other  years.  Everything  is  exaggerated 
by  enemies  of  Russia  at  this  time,  and  the  rest  of 
the  world  does  not  know,  and  never  interested  itself 
to  know  before,  that  there  are  always  strikes  and 
small  disturbances  in  every  city,  when  the  peasants 
have  come  in  from  the  country  to  work  in  the 
factories  during  the  winter.  All  this  we  owe  to 
De  Witte  and  his  blessed  industrialism  that  was  to 
change  and  regenerate  Russia.  This  affair  of 
January  22d  in  Petersburg,  however,  seems  to  be 
a  little  out  of  the  usual,  and  we  are  all  much  con- 
cerned. That  outcast,  that  degenerate,  that 
Maxim  Gorky,  seems  to  have  been  at  the  bottom  of 
it;  and,  in  common  with  all  decent  Russians,  I 
wish  we  might  have  an  end  of  him  and  his  ravings, 
his  studies  of  the  lowest  life  of  our  cities.  All 
countries  and  capitals  have  their  slums,  but  why 
exploit  them?  and  why  do  outsiders  read  such 
things  and  always  talk  about  them,  as  if  they  were 
the  typical,  usual  life  of  all  classes  of  the  whole 
empire?  As  if  we  all  slept  under  old  boats  on  the 


THE  DULL  ROUTINE  265 

banks  of  the  Volga!  or  slept  in  penny-a-night 
lodging  houses !  Bah !  We  read  that  Gorky  is 
allowed  thirty-four  Japanese  sens  a  day  for  his 
food  in  prison,  and  that  he,  a  consumptive,  is 
kept  without  fire.  The  newspapers  hold  this  up  as 
an  example  of  how  Russians  are  treated  in  Russian 
prisons,  and  draw  contrasts  with  the  situation  here 
in  Japan.  I  would  not  admit  that  this  about 
Gorky's  prison  fare  might  be  true,  to  the  Ameri- 
cans who  had  asked  me  about  it.  I  told  them  that 
it  was  probably  a  canard  from  some  English  news- 
paper, and  that  all  Americans  were  mad  about 
Russian  prisons  anyhow.  He  said  that  Americans 
only  believed  what  Russians  themselves  wrote 
about  Russian  prisons.  Was  it  a  true  picture  of 
the  prisons  in  Tolstoi's  "Resurrection"?  Bah! 
We  one  and  all  cursed  Tolstoi,  but  we  could  not 
say  anything  more.  The  French  Consul  says  that 
last  winter  a  dramatisation  of  "Resurrection"  was 
produced  at  a  Tokyo  theatre,  and  announced  as: 
"A  Study  of  Russian  Social  Life  and  Customs"! 
Heaven  forbid!  Think  of  that!  Think  what 
Russia  suffers  in  misrepresentation  by  her  own 
writers.  It  really  seems  to  be  a  conspiracy  of  all 
the  world  to  misrepresent  us,  to  put  us  wrong  and 
show  our  exceptional  worst  as  the  typical  average. 
It  is  useless  to  argue.  I  give  it  up.  At  times  my 
allegiance  weakens  terribly,  and  I  suppose  for  all 
the  rest  of  our  lives  we  must  go  on  excusing  and 


266         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

explaining  and  trying  to  put  our  half-civilised, 
our  quarter-civilised  country  in  better  light. 

At  last  our  army  at  Mukden  has  begun  to  move. 
Two  great  armies,  a  half-million  men,  have  been 
lying  in  trenches  and  caves  ever  since  Kuropatkin's 
fiasco  on  the  Shaho  in  October.  The  sentries  have 
talked  together,  and  the  men  in  the  trenches  have 
shouted  across,  and  none  of  us  can  understand  this 
long  inaction,  this  armistice.  The  Japanese  have 
naturally  preferred  to  crouch  over  their  hibachis 
in  the  underground  trenches;  but  cold  is  nothing 
to  Russians,  and  our  real  campaign  was  to  open 
in  December.  What  is  Kuropatkin  doing? 
Mistchenko's  raid  down  the  Liao  River  to  New- 
chwang  did  not  accomplish  anything,  and  did  not 
cover  a  movement  from  Mukden,  as  we  had 
thought.  Mistchenko  only  took  a  long,  cold  ride, 
and  got  a  bullet  in  his  leg,  for  his  trouble. 
Another  failure.  And  Cossack  is  now  a  name  of 
derision  to  all  the  world. 

The  American  pope  said  the  other  day  that  the 
greatest  surprise  to  the  world  in  this  war,  had  been 
the  harmlessness  of  the  Cossacks ;  that  they  were 
now  an  exploded  myth,  an  outlived  delusion,  a  ter- 
rible bogy  forever  laid  at  rest;  that  everybody's 
teeth  used  to  chatter  when  we  said :  "Cossack !"  but 
that  now  the  Cossacks  seemed  only  good  for  whip- 
ping unarmed  women  and  students,  and  shooting 
priests.  A  rather  strong  indictment,  but  true.  I 


THE  DULL  ROUTINE  267 

am  afraid  all  Russia  is  coming  to  be  an  exploded 
myth — a  bubble  pricked — a  decadent  empire  ruled 
by  a  race  of  degenerates. 

All  the  white-robed,  red-crossed  company  at 
the  hospital  have  renewed  their  vituperations  of 
Stoessel.  Why,  think  you? 

Some  days  ago  ninety  barrels  of  pickled  cab- 
bage arrived  from  Port  Arthur.  A  spoil  of  war 
that  will  help  feed  this  army  of  no  occupation  now 
idling  in  Japan.  That  everlasting  Japanese  pre- 
arrangement  had  no  part  in  providing  this 
cabbage.  Stoessel  did  that.  The  high-smelling 
pickle  offended  the  Japanese,  who  can  endure  their 

own  daikon;  and  they  asked  Andrew  Y to  see 

if  it  was  fit  to  eat,  or  if  it  should  not  be  destroyed. 
"Excellent!  Excellent!"  said  Andrew.  "The 
men  will  be  happy  to  have  it  every  day,  and  the 
officers  may  like  it  once  or  twice  a  week !"  But 
some  pushed  it  from  them  with  fury,  and  because 
of  this  captured  cabbage  flayed  poor  Stoessel  alive 
again  on  a  new  count. 

"What !  I  surrender  with  ninety  barrels  of  this 
cabbage  in  the  cellar  ?  Never !"  thundered  Griev- 
sky.  He  figured  it  out,  knowing  the  precise  Japa- 
nese ways  of  ratio  and  apportionment,  how  many 
hundreds  of  barrels  there  must  have  been  in  the 
storehouses  of  the  surrendered  fortress,  if  ninety 
barrels  came  to  Matsuyama.  "Surely,  four  hun- 
dred and  fifty  barrels  must  have  gone  to  Nagoya, 


268         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

and  nine  hundred  barrels  to  the  Hamadera  camp! 
Oh!  the  black  villainy  of  that  Stoessel!  It 
grows  worse  and  worse!  Kusai!  Kusai!  [It 
smells !  It  smells !]  the  Japanese  can  truly 
say." 


CHAPTER  XXXII 
THE  FINDING  OF  TOSABURO 

Monday,  February  6th. 

T  AST  night  was  the  full  moon  night,  the  fif- 
•*— '  teenth  night  of  the  Chinese,  or  lunar  year. 
Madame  Takasu  sent  me  word  in  the  morning  that 
the  Jiu-Roku-Zakura,  the  Sixteenth-Day-Cherry- 
Tree,  the  tree  with  a  soul,  was  actually  blooming 
now  in  the  dead  of  winter.  As  all  lyo  will  flock 
to  see  it — no,  to  worship  it — for  the  next  fortnight, 
we  went  early.  As  first-nighters,  we  assisted  at 
this  annual  premiere  of  the  old  tree  with  a  very 
charming  company  of  poets  and  aristocrats,  the 
same  charming  circle  encountered  at  the  chateau 
the  night  of  the  moon-viewing,  in  September.  It 
is  strange  enough,  at  this  season — in  the  dead  of 
winter,  when  only  camellias  can  stand  the  cold 
nights,  and  my  beautiful  hedge  shows  many  a 
browned  blossom  every  morning,  and  hardy  plum 
trees  are  only  beginning  to  bud — it  is  strange  to 
think  of  a  cherry  tree  blooming.  It  is  plainly 
supernatural. 

It  is  stranger  yet  to  see  that  picturesque  green 
269 


270         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

glen  of  the  lonely  temple  now  alive  with  sentries 
and  idling,  strolling  prisoners  of  war;  for  even 
the  Cherry  Tree  Temple  has  been  taken  for  a  depot 
for  horios — a  forlorn,  melancholy  lot  of  soldiers 
from  Port  Arthur.  It  was  not  in  harmony  with 
the  poetry  of  flower-worshipping  to  come  upon 
these  shaggy  Cossacks  and  sailors,  and  shabby 
men  of  all  arms  and  kinds.  I  looked  at  them  criti- 
cally too,  they  were  so  different  from  the  suffering 
men  in  white  kimonos  at  the  hospital.  And  what  a 
lot  of  criminals,  cutthroats,  and  ragamuffins  they 
looked  to  be!  Not  a  comely,  a  joyous,  or  a  smil- 
ing countenance  there.  I  appreciate  now  the  con- 
ventional Japanese  smile  when  the  heart  is  break- 
ing, the  smile  when  suffering  intense  pain,  the 
smile  when  telling  sad  news.  It  is  better  than  the 
gloomy  Russian  countenances  we  meet. 

The  officer  in  command  came  from  the  guard- 
house, bowed  profoundly  to  Madame  Takasu,  and 
offered  to  go  with  us.  They  had  been  a  little  in 
doubt,  he  said,  whether  to  close  the  temple  court 
to  visitors,  or  to  shut  the  prisoners  inside  during 
the  blossom  time.  They  finally  concluded  that 
either  would  be  undeserved  punishment.  It  is  old 
custom  in  lyo  to  make  a  pilgrimage  to  this  tree, 
which  first  bloomed  on  the  sixteenth  day  of  the 
year  in  answer  to  a  son's  prayer  that  his  dying 
father  might  once  more  see  the  sakura  no  hana 
(cherry  blossoms).  The  dying  man's  soul  entered 


THE  FINDING  OF  TOSABURO      271 

into  the  tree,  and  the  Jiu-Roku-Zakura  is  as 
famous  as  any  of  the  classic  Chinese  "Twenty-six 
Examples  of  Filial  Piety."  The  people  wish  to 
see  it  in  war-time  more  than  ever,  and  are  admitted 
to  worship  the  budding  branches;  to  clap  their 
hands  and  say  a  prayer ;  to  look  over  the  parapet 
at  the  beautiful  view;  and  to  look  their  fill  at 
the  uncouth  horios — peasants  from  a  Christian 
country,  who  have  no  such  refinements  of  life  and 
thought,  nothing  so  elevated  in  country-side  cus- 
toms as  this  divine  flower-worshipping. 

It  was  cool  and  fresh  in  the  little  valley,  and 
when  we  had  wound  up  the  long  path,  and  climbed 
the  outer  terrace  steps,  there  stood  the  many- 
branched  tree,  all  dotted  over  with  brown  buds 
bursting  to  show  pink  petals,  while  a  few  full 
flowers  turned  pale  faces  to  the  chilly  sunshine. 
"How  white  it  is !"  I  exclaimed.  "Why,  the  cherry 
blossoms  in  Tokyo  used  to  be  rose-pink;  as  pink 
as  my  tsubakis."  The  lieutenant  watched  us  nar- 
rowly, and  Madame  Takasu  said  very  gravely: 
"It  is  because  of  the  war.  So  much  blood  has  been 
shed  in  Manchuria  that  even  the  cherry  flowers 
are  pale,  without  colour,  this  year." 

I  caught  my  breath;  the  tears  came.  Oh! 
these  exquisite  people !  What  other  race  or  nation 
has  soul  and  sentiment  to  such  degree  as  to  feel 
that  even  the  flowers  are  blanched  at  the  torrents 
of  blood  that  have  flowed  in  Manchuria!  What 


272         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

a  thought !  How  Japanese !  Ah !  that  Laf cadio 
Hearn  were  living ! 

"How  did  you  learn  our  Japanese  language?" 
asked  the  lieutenant,  and  I  gave  him  the  name  of 
my  teachers  in  Matsuyama. 

"But  it  is  very  difficult,  our  language.  Had  you 
never  studied  Japanese  language  before?"  he  per- 
sisted. 

"Oh,  yes,  a  little.  Once  before,  a  long  time  ago, 
I  had  been  in  Tokyo." 

"Oh !  Oh !  Oh !  was  it  at  the  Russian  Koshikan 
[legation]  ?  You  must  be  my  friend  the  miya  sama 
[the  princess]  Sophia !  I  knew  you.  I  knew  you ! 
It  was  long  ago,  when  I  was  a  little  boy ;  but  I 
remember.  Oh,  yes !  I  remember,  and  I  still  have 
all  those  beautiful  eggs.  I  cried  many,  many  days, 
when  you  went  away  without  me.  I  wanted  to  go, 
as  Saigo's  son  had  gone  with  Russian  Minister's 
children  to  Russia,  but  you  would  not  take  me. 
And  now — Oh !  it  is  very  wonderful !  very  wonder- 
ful!" and  the  little  man  began  to  open  his  card- 
case. 

"But  who  are  you?"  I  asked  in  surprise  at  this 
link  in  my  past  life  reappearing,  for  his  card  in 
Japanese  text  told  me  nothing. 

"Oh!  you  would  not  know  me  by  that.  I  have 
new  name  now.  I  used  to  be  Tosaburo,  Higuchi's 
son,  Tosaburo.  Then  I  was  only  third  son;  now 
I  am  adopted  son.  I  am  Kato  son;  a  lieutenant 


THE  FINDING  OF  TOSABURO      273 

since  the  war  has  begun.  Oh!  I  am  so  grieving, 
because  they  will  not  send  me  to  war  in  Man- 
churia." 

"Lieutenant  Kato!  My  little  Tosaburo! 
Impossible!  Oh!  Molodetz!  Molodetz!"  I 
cried. 

"Yes.  That  is  what  you  used  to  call  me.  And 
do  you  remember  nice  sakura  [cherry]  and  momiji 
[maple]  parties  in  Fukiage  gardens  with  my 
mother  ?  Well,  she  is  gone,  now ;  and  Fukiage  is 
not  for  the  Kuges  any  more.  It  is  Emperor's  own 
garden  now.  No  one  can  go  there  at  all,  to  see 
the  flowers  in  spring ;  only  to  Enriokwan ;  and  that 
palace  is  pulled  down.  Oh!  Tokyo  is  so  changed 
since  I  was  a  boy." 

"But  Kato?  Kato?  You  must  be  the  daimio  of 
lyo  now." 

"No,  no!  Those  are  not  my  ancestors  at 
Dairinji.  My  new  family  was  not  of  Kato 
Kiyomasa,  who  went  to  Korea.  Oh !  No !  There 
are  many  Katos  in  Japan.  It  is  common  name, 
like  Ito,  and  Inouye,  and  Watanabe;  and  I  am 
just  one  of  those  many  Katos.  There  have  been 
Hisamatsus,  Matsudairas,  and  Hanabusas  here 
as  daimios,  since  the  Katos.  But  your  miya  sama, 
your  Jcnias  sama,  where  is  he  ?  Oh !  Oh !  a  thousand 
pardons.  I  had  forgotten  all  that  at  the  Hibiya. 
I  am  so  stupid — so  sorry — so  sorry.  Please  for- 
give. I  am  just  like  an  Aino,  you  see,  miya  sama. 


274         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

I  have  lost  all  my  civilised  manners.  Oh !  Forgive 
me." 

I  told  him  my  new  name,  and  that  I  had  also 
been  adopted;  that  a  Russian  Colonel,  bandaged 
fast  to  his  cot  at  the  barracks  hospital,  had  adopted 
me.  His  eyes  opened  full  at  that.  And  then  he 
laughed,  went  off  in  a  storm  of  glee,  at  the  idea  of 
my  being  adopted  too,  and  having  a  new  name.  The 
years  rolled  away  for  a  minute,  and  I  played  again 
and  made  jokes  for  my  jolly  little  Tokyo  neighbour. 
We  had  the  jolly  joke  over  again  of  my  adopting 
him,  and  taking  him  back  to  Russia  to  grow  up 
as  my  own  knias  sama,  because  there  were  two 
brothers  older  than  he,  and  he  really  "was  not 
needed  in  Japan,"  as  he  used  to  argue.  And  now, 
what  a  situation  it  would  be  if  he  were  a  Russian 
Jcnias  sama! — and  at  war  with  Russia !  Or  with 
Japan?  Oh!  No!  No!  quite  impossible,  that. 

The  prisoners  had  slipped  the  paper  doors, 
crowded  out  into  the  court,  and  surrounded  us  in 
a  silent,  staring  circle,  ten  deep.  Little  Madame 
Takasu  drew  closer  to  me,  as  these  heavy,  stupid 
faces  made  a  wall  around  us.  "Oh!  I  am  so 
afraid,"  she  said,  with  an  appealing  smile — that 
wonderful  Japanese  smile  of  good  manners,  tri- 
umphant over  all  personal  feeling.  The  prisoners 
looked  as  savage  and  ferocious,  as  untamed  and 
uncombed  as  any  barbarians  one  could  ever  meet. 
Pity  stirred  within  me  for  the  poor,  idle,  densely- 


THE  FINDING  OF  TOSABURO      275 

ignorant,  dumb  creatures,  driven  to  the  army  and 
war,  as  cattle  are  driven  to  pasture  or  abattoir, 
but  no  pulse  of  pride  stirred  at  contemplation  of 
them  as  my  own  nationals,  as  fellow-countrymen, 
as  Russians.  They  were  a  frowsy  lot,  in  disor- 
derly uniforms,  and  every  race-type  was  repre- 
sented there,  from  the  Laplander  and  Finn,  and 
the  flat-faced,  broken-nosed  men  of  the  Volga,  to 
the  clear-cut  faces  of  the  Caucasians  and  Buriat 
Mongols.  Men  of  every  religion — Jews,  Catholics, 
Lutherans,  Armenians,  Old  Faith,  Stundist, 
Orthodox,  Mohammedan — were  in  that  stolid, 
gaping  mass  that  surrounded  us,  and  whose  odour 
was  strong,  peculiar,  and  distinct,  as  if  they  were 
horses  or  goats. 

"Speak  to  them !"  said  the  little  lieutenant,  and 
when  I  uttered  a  few  words  in  Russian  there  was 
a  show  of  life  in  the  dull  faces.  "A  Barlna!  A 
Barina!"  they  repeated  with  stupefaction,  and 
looked  helplessly  to  a  petty  officer  from  the  ships, 
who  was  their  spokesman.  Translating  for  my 
companions,  I  learned  that  they  longed  for  some- 
thing to  do — some  work  to  occupy,  some  musical 
instruments  to  help  cheer  the  long  days  of  noth- 
ingness. And  then  they  naively  asked  about  the 
tree.  "Oh,  so  many  Japonski  have  been  here  lately, 
and  they  all  look  and  look  at  this  one  tree  and 
talk  about  it.  And  yesterday,  Barina,  some  old 
men  with  white  beards  came  here,  and  they  wrote 


276         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

all  those  notices  you  see  hanging  there,  and  tied 
them  up  and  went  away.  I  suppose  they  are  going 
to  chop  down  that  tree,  or  sell  this  place,  and  then 
where  will  they  send  us?" 

When  I  interpreted  the  Cossacks'  idea  about 
the  poem  papers,  Tosaburo  laughed  amazedly  at 
such  ignorance  of  poetic  custom.  Poor  Tosaburo 
was  chagrined  that  he  could  not  accompany  two 
such  distinguished  visitors  back  to  the  city,  but  he 
was  on  duty,  hard  and  fast,  for  three  days. 

"Yes,  I  am  very  honoured  for  one  so  young,  of 
cadet  school,  for  I  command  three  military  posts, 
you  see;  or,  I  am  the  bonze  san  of  three  temples. 
Just  as  you  like.  But  my  first  day,  I  shall  come 
to  see  the  knias  sama." 


CHAPTER  XXXIII 
A  LITTLE  VICTORY 

Friday,  February  17th. 

'  I  ^HERE  were  sounds  of  a  gogai  in  faraway 
-*•  streets  as  I  left  the  house  this  morning ;  but 
I  had  not  a  chance  to  ask  the  news,  until  I  met  the 
surliest  of  all  the  interpreters  at  the  operating- 
room  door.  To  my  query  he  answered:  "It  is 
death  of  very  bad  man,  your  Grand  Duke 
Sergius." 

"No  one  in  the  world  could  agree  with  you  better 
than  I  on  that  question,"  I  told  the  astonished 
boor.  He  dropped  his  lower  jaw,  and  the  heavy 
rice-mouth  with  its  big  white  teeth  gaped  wide 
open.  Foiled  of  his  purpose  of  insult,  he  moved 
off  sullenly;  and  later,  the  American  sister  of 
charity,  who  was  on  duty,  told  me  of  the  bomb- 
throwing  within  the  Kremlin  square.  She  thought 
it  might  be  well  not  to  mention  it  in  the  wards, 
although  no  order  had  been  given;  but  I  assured 
her  that  it  would  not  be  a  cause  of  sadness  and 
depression  to  any  there;  that  in  fact  they  would 
more  likely  rejoice  and  cheer  up. 

But  the  poor  Grand  Duchess,  whom  we  all  so 
277 


278         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

admire!  All  the  prisoners  have  enjoyed  her 
bounty  from  the  first.  Only  a  few  weeks  ago,  a 

large    sum    came    to    Andrew   Y ,    whom    she 

deputed  to  act  as  her  almoner ;  and  his  friends  had 
their  pleasure  in  making  him  explain  every  time 
that  it  was  not  Serge  Alexandrovitch,  but  Eliza- 
beth of  Hesse,  whose  kindness  was  extended  to 
them. 

It  would  not  do  to  record  the  treasonable  senti- 
ments expressed  on  receipt  of  this  news,  and  there 
was  sorrow  for  the  Grand  Duchess  only  that  it 
was  accomplished  in  such  a  shocking  way.  "Now 
my  Cossacks  may  get  their  overcoats  and  shoes," 
said  one  officer  tersely.  "No  more  bales  of 
Cossacks'  great-coats  will  be  sold  at  the  Sunday 
morning  Thieves'  Market  at  Moscow."  Their 
tongues  once  loosened,  my  patients  talked  so  freely 
that  I  felt  as  if  in  a  Geneva  Nihilist  assembly. 
It  is  amazing  what  advanced  and  liberal  senti- 
ments they  dare  voice,  dare  continually  and  openly 
discuss  here  in  this  freedom !  And  what  contra- 
diction! Freedom  in  prison!  Freedom  of  speech 
in  a  pagan,  Asiatic  country,  but  not  in  our  own 
Christian  country!  There  is  no  censorship  of 
what  we  read  here,  save  as  the  censor  cuts  out 
notes  of  military  affairs  in  the  Kobe  paper;  and, 
what  the  censor  cuts  out  for  Dairinji,  the  censor 
at  Oguri  leaves  untouched.  The  revolutionary 
emissary,  brought  from  Port  Arthur,  so  wearied 


A  LITTLE  VICTORY  279 

his  fellow  captives  with  his  philippics  that  they 
begged  the  Japanese  to  take  him  away.  He  and 
his  big  Baden-Powell  hat  have  disappeared  from 
Matsuyama,  and  he  is  now  frothing  his  anarchist 
doctrines  to  a  new  audience. 

All  the  books  forbidden  us  in  Russia  are  freely 
read  and  lent  around  here.  There  is  liberty  of 
mind  at  least  in  these  paper  and  bamboo  prisons. 
Many  are  seriously  reading  and  discussing  re- 
publican forms  of  government  and  representative 
assemblies.  The  Oxford  Professor  Bryce's  book  on 
the  American  Commonwealth  is  often  brought  me 
by  those  who  want  me  to  argue  its  English  into 
clearer  Russian.  Vladimir  and  the  old  Colonel  say 
that  all  this  seething  of  liberal  ideas,  all  this  talk  of 
constitutions  and  parliaments  is  like  the  times  in 
the  last  months  of  Alexander  the  Liberator's  life. 
The  old  Colonel  wept  the  other  day  when  he  told 
how  near  Russia  once  was  to  attaining  liberal  rule 
and  political  enlightenment.  "To  think  how  the 
Constitution  of  Loris  Melikoff  was  laboured  over 
until  that  last  midnight,  when  Loris  Melikoff 
came  home  and  said  the  greatest  work  of  the  cen- 
tury was  accomplished — a  greater  work  than  the 
liberation  of  the  serfs.  The  next  day  it  was 
signed,  and  Alexander  Nicholaivitch  rose,  rejoiced, 
and  went  for  a  drive,  pondering  on  his  ukase  of 
the  next  day  declaring  this  new  Constitution.  I 
saw  it  with  my  own  eyes,  I  held  it  in  my  own  hands. 


280         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

I  read  it.  I  read  it.  I  know  it  yet,  every  word," 
said  the  old  officer  excitedly.  "And  then — one 
bomb — one  second — and  Russia  was  hurled  back 
to  all  this  twenty-odd  years  of  stagnation,  of 
arrested  development,  of  retrogression  under 
Pobedonostseff's  rule.  Reaction,  oppression,  per- 
secution, and  darkest  ignorance  are  the  story  of 
the  years.  Eighteen  roubles  spent  on  the  army  to 
each  rouble  spent  on  the  schools !  Millions  of 
people  living  like  dumb  cattle,  unable  to  read  or 
to  write!  And  this  going  on  generation  after 
generation  when  many  of  us  are  willing,  but,  yes, 
are  actually  prevented,  forbidden,  punished,  for 
trying  to  teach  the  peasants.  Children  are  ex- 
cluded from  the  schools  because  of  their  race  or 
religion,  and  zemstvo  schools  are  hindered  or 
closed.  There  seems  to  be  no  hope,  no  help  for 
Russia.  Von  Plehve  and  Serge  have  gone  to  their 
account,  but  that  archangel  of  evil,  old  Pobedo- 
nostieff,  lives." 

Beside  all  our  regular  social  distinctions  and 
classes,  our  order  of  rank  and  titles,  there  is  a 
subtle  line  drawn  here  in  Matsuyama  that  cuts 
through  all  the  prisoner  company  of  officers.  It 
is  as  near  to  hearing  Monnet-Sully  as  we  can  come 
when  Grievsky,  in  some  of  his  long  tirades,  beats 
his  breast  and  says:  "We  who  were  captured  in 
action,  and  those  surrendered  ones  from  Port 
Arthur !"  And  then,  among  the  surrendered  ones 


281 

there  is  a  line  drawn  between  the  military  and 
naval  officers.  Von  Woerffel  tries  to  be  a  peace- 
maker and  go-between  of  all  kinds ;  for,  although 
of  the  navy,  he  was  not  of  the  Port  Arthur  fleet. 
At  his  suggestion  I  have  been  to  visit  the  temples, 
where  the  naval  officers  are  quartered.  Dairinji, 
near  the  railway  station,  has  the  largest  company 
of  fleet  officers,  and  they  gave  me  tea  and  good 
music. 

They  are  very  sure  that  the  Japanese  threat  of 
raising  the  Russian  ships  in  Port  Arthur  is  an  idle 
boast.  Each  set  of  ship's  officers  made  thorough 
work  of  destroying  the  vessels,  when  the  loss 
of  Two-Hundred-and-Three-Metre  Hill  left  the 
ships  so  many  plain  targets  for  Japanese  gunners. 
They  exploded  dynamite  inside,  and  fired  mines 
and  torpedoes  from  the  outside,  and  none  of  the 
Russian  battleships  and  cruisers  will  ever  be  raised 
and  dragged  over  to  Japan  like  captives  in  a 
Roman  triumphal  procession.  To  be  saved  that 
humiliation  is  something.  All  speak  affection- 
ately, even  tearfully,  of  their  lost  ships.  All  have 
pictures  of  their  ships  in  gala  array,  and  as  con- 
trasts, pictures  of  those  same  ships  sunk  to  their 
funnels  and  tilted  at  every  angle  as  they  lie  with 
decks  awash,  resting  on  the  bottom  of  Port  Arthur 
harbour.  As  Von  WoerfFel  says,  there  cannot  be 
much  room  left  for  the  fishes  now,  it  is  so  crowded 
with  battleships,  cruisers,  gunboats,  torpedo- 


282         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

boats,  and  dozens  and  dozens  of  launches  and  small 
boats,  beside  the  wreckage  of  the  Japanese  block- 
ing expeditions.  The  harbour  is  also  paved  with 
guns,  rifles,  revolvers,  swords,  and  ammunition 
that  were  thrown  there  the  night  Stoessel  signed 
the  infamous  surrender.  The  officers  led  and  the 
men  followed,  until  it  was  like  the  throwing  of 
carnival  confetti. 

They  are  a  very  gloomy  and  depressed  com- 
pany, these  sailors  ashore.  Their  bandsmen, 
many  of  whom  are  now  acting  as  officers'  servants, 
weep  for  their  abandoned  musical  instruments.  It 
was  unnecessary  cruelty  to  thus  deprive  these  poor 
musicians  of  their  very  breath  of  life  and  a  part 
of  their  being,  by  obliging  them  to  leave  their  in- 
struments behind.  The  officers,  too,  are  sad 
without  the  consolation  and  distraction  of  music, 
and  the  French  Consul  is  overwhelmed  with  re- 
quests for  musical  instruments.  He  spent  much 
of  the  Queen  of  Greece's  contribution  in  buying  a 
piano  for  each  "Prisoners'  Base,"  for  each  etape, 
and  piles  of  sheet  music  besides.  The  officers  at 
Myoenji  had  more  photographs  than  any  of  the 
others — innumerable  views  of  the  wounded  battle- 
ships and  cruisers,  with  their  decks  slanting  to  the 
tide.  And  the  poor  Pobieda!  riddled  from  with- 
out, wrecked  from  within,  the  machinery  a  tangle 
of  rusted  rubbish,  leaning  to  the  Pallada — the 
broken  dream  of  Russia's  sea  power. 


A  LITTLE  VICTORY  283 

Mikhail's  cousin  had  pictures  of  his  own  fat- 
funnelled  torpedo-boat,  the  -  ,  which  was 
captured  from  the  Chinese  at  Taku  forts  five  years 
ago  ;  and  in  which  he  had  several  times  raced  over 
to  Chefoo  by  night  and  back  again.  "The  Japa- 
nese tried  to  get  my  torpedo-boat  at  the  Boxer 
time,  and  they  thought  they  would  get  it  again  ; 
but  I  settled  all  that  when  ordered  ashore.  They 
can  lift  her,  but  she  will  be  an  iron  box  with  the 
bottom  dropped  out." 


Sunday,  February  19th. 

We  have  many  new  cases  in  hospital  now 
from  this  last  fiasco  of  Gripenberg's  —  an  advance 
straight  at  the  Japanese  front  which  carried  him 
to  Sandepu  and  Heikoutai.  It  was  all  hard  fighting 
for  three  days  in  a  blinding  snowstorm  ;  and  then, 
as  Kuropatkin  did  not  send  up  reinforcements, 
Gripenberg  had  to  march  back  again,  passing  his 
wounded,  who  had  frozen  to  death  where  they  fell, 
with  no  effort  from  the  great  army  to  even  succour 
them.  The  jet-black,  frosted  feet  and  hands,  that 
are  brought  here  now,  wring  one's  heart  in  pity. 
What  wasted  effort  !  What  a  senseless  sacrifice  of 
human  beings!  "The  King  of  France  with 
a  hundred  thousand  men  marched  up  the  hill  and 
then  marched  down  again."  An  heroic  march,  a 


284          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

little  victory;  and  then,  defeat,  retreat — and 
many  prisoners  brought  to  Japan. 

How  weary  I  am  of  this  continued  story  of 
hesitation,  incompetency,  bickerings,  and  defeat ! 

The  whole  army  blames  Kuropatkin  for  his 
failure  to  follow  Gripenberg's  advance,  and  for 
his  turning  the  Sandepu  victory  into  the  Heikoutai 
defeat.  Nothing  that  Bertha  von  Suttner  de- 
scribes equals  the  horrors  of  this  Heikoutai — this 
battle  in  a  blizzard — when  the  surgeons'  hands 
were  frosted  as  they  worked;  when  flesh  and  in- 
struments froze  as  they  touched  together;  and 
severed  arteries  were  stanched  without  dressings. 
Ah !  Truly  !  Lay  down  your  arms !  Lay  down 
your  arms ! 

Vladimir  dwells  now  on  the  fact  that  the  one 
success,  the  one  advance  of  the  whole  war,  was 
made  by  a  general  of  German  descent  and  tra- 
ditions, one  of  the  non-Russian  officers  to  whom 
Alexander  Nicholaivitch  gave  the  important 
places,  and  whose  superior  intelligence,  character, 
and  ability  even  Alexander  Alexandrovitch  had  to 
admit.  No  other  Russian  general  has  done  any- 
thing but  disgrace  himself  so  far.  No  new  stars 
have  risen,  no  geniuses  come  forward,  no  great 
reputations  have  been  made.  In  fact,  reputations 
have  been  unmade;  and  Kuropatkin  retains  credit 
now  only  for  his  social  qualities,  his  literary 
abilities,  his  French  puns.  The  Poles  have  won 


A  LITTLE  VICTORY  285 

all  the  honours  so  far.  The  best  engineers,  gun- 
ners, and  surgeons  were  Poles,  and  one  Polish 
officer  on  a  torpedo-boat  did  things  as  recklessly 
brave  as  the  Japanese  away  back  in  last  March. 


Sunday,  March  12th. 

Tosaburo  made  his  ceremonial  call  on  Vladimir, 
and  the  handsome  chap  made  the  most  complete 
conquest  of  my  danna  son.  Even  Grievsky  ad- 
mitted that  he  was  a  true  bushi,  an  ideal  Japanese, 
the  most  charmingly  polished  and  refined  jailer  he 
had  ever  met.  I  had  such  a  pride  in  my  protege 
that  both  Vladimir  and  Lyov  poked  fun  at  me. 
His  presence  made  a  flutter  in  the  chancery,  too. 
Half  the  bureau  escorted  him  to  our  ward,  and 
even  the  surliest  cub  of  an  interpreter  put  on 
good  manners  for  the  occasion,  and  wanted  to  stay 
and  interpret.  Tosaburo  waved  him  off,  in  the 
magnificent  way  these  long-descended  aristocrats 
have,  and  said  briefly  to  the  soshi,  "No!  No! 
The  mlya  sama  can  interpret  for  all  languages," 
and  the  interpreter,  looking  bewilderedly  around, 
finally  brought  his  gaze  to  me  and  stood  stock-still, 
frankly  open-mouthed  with  astonishment.  His 
brain  was  working  over  those  words,  miya  sama, 
and  their  application  to  me,  when  Tosaburo, 
having  clicked  his  heels  together  and  made  a 
military  salute  to  Vladimir,  and  then  a  nice  Eng- 


286         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

lish  handshake,  turned  and  said  a  casual  and  quite 
polite  "Begone !"  And  the  interpreter  vanished. 
The  other  officers  came  in,  and  limped  in,  to  have 
tea  with  our  unusual  visitor,  and  a  cloud  of 
officials  looked  on  from  the  entrance  and  passage- 
ways, saluting  profoundly  when  he  left. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV 

MUKDEN'S  DESPAIR 

Sunday,  March  26th. 

T  T  7"E  accept  the  defeat  of  Mukden  as  a  shame- 
ful fact ;  a  last  indictment  of  the  Russian 
generals  and  the  army ;  and  we  lose  ourselves,  as 
best  we  may,  in  the  dimensions  and  details  of  the 
world's  greatest  battle.  It  is  strange  the  comfort 
the  megalomaniacs  can  get  out  of  the  fact  that 
the  front  of  the  army  was  one  hundred  miles  wide, 
the  defeat  a  hundred  miles  long.  It  does  not  com- 
fort me  to  consider  that  that  mad,  headlong 
retreat  continued  for  one  hundred  miles. 

For  the  wounded,  my  heart  bleeds.  Sad  enough 
is  the  state  of  those  who  fell,  and  lay  until  the 
Japanese  advance  came  and  carried  them  off.  It 
will  be  long  before  we  hear  how  it  fared  with  the 
thousands  who  were  thrown  hastily  into  cars  and 
sent  to  Harbin,  without  fire,  food,  coverings, 
nurses,  or  doctors.  "We  could  not  help  it.  The 
Japanese  were  upon  us  before  we  knew.  We  were 
worn  out  with  three  days'  hard  fighting,  night 
and  day,  with  a  snowstorm  and  a  blinding  dust- 
storm;  and  we  lay  down  at  midnight  five  miles 
287 


288         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

from  the  Japanese  lines.  We  woke  up  to  find  all 
Mukden  filled  with  Japanese  and  the  Russian  army 
ten  miles  away.  They  treated  us  well.  Here  we 
are.  That  is  all.  War  is  not  vaudeville,  but  we 
felt  very  foolish  that  morning  in  Mukden.  It  was 
our  usual  want  of  information — and  hesitation, 
hesitation,  hesitation — indecision.  The  same  old 
curse  of  Russia.  If  the  dust-storm  had  not  been  in 
their  faces,  the  Japanese  would  have  arrived 
sooner,  and  we  would  have  been  a  larger  company. 
That  is  all.  They  had  maps  of  the  country,  and 
we  had  not.  In  all  the  years  in  Manchuria,  our 
officers  had  made  no  topographical  surveys;  and 
when  they  hurried  up  some  maps  for  campaign 
use,  they  would  have  done  as  well  for  the  Caucasus. 
If  the  map  showed  a  mountain  you  might  be  sure 
that  you  would  find  instead  a  river  too  deep  to 
ford. 

Then  another  captive  raged  at  what  he  called 
the  "deception"  of  General  Nogi.  It  seems  that 
Nogi's  army  never  went  into  barracks  at  Port 
Arthur,  at  all.  That  grim  old  besieger  did  not  let 
his  men  weaken  in  the  luxuries  of  our  Russian 
Capua.  He  moved  his  men  and  guns,  as  soon  as 
Stoessel's  inglorious  army  had  marched  out;  but 
he  did  not  move  them  to  face  the  Russian  left, 
as  our  officers  took  it  for  granted  he  would  do,  and 
implicitly  believed  he  had  done.  Having  concen- 
trated their  strength  to  meet  him  there,  they  think 


MUKDEN'S  DESPAIR  289 

it  a  breach  of  faith  that  he  circled  away  off  and 
fell  upon  their  right  flank  miles  north  of  Mukden. 
There  is  an  officer  in  the  seventh  ward  who  tells 
of  the  panic  that  seized  his  men,  when  the  Japa- 
nese sprang  upon  them  unexpectedly,  shouting  in 
Russian :  "We  are  Nogi's  men  from  Port  Arthur." 

Vladimir  and  Lyov  are  sick  with  disgust  that 
several  of  the  paroled  officers  of  the  Port  Arthur 
garrison  were  captured  by  Nogi's  men  at  Sinmin- 
tun.  They  have  been  brought  here,  and  Vladimir 
says  no  self-respecting  man  should  speak  to  them. 
"Parole  d'honneur  means  nothing  to  a  Russian," 
the  Japanese  continue  to  say ;  for  Port  Arthur 
naval  officers,  who  gave  parole  to  take  no  further 
part  in  the  war  and  were  released,  have  been  cap- 
tured lately  trying  to  run  ships  into  Vladivostok. 
Long  before  that,  paroled  officers  from  the  Russian 
gunboats  at  Shanghai,  went  around  through 
China  to  Port  Arthur,  and  met  death  on  Maka- 
roff's  ship.  What  can  one  say  when  these  things 
happen,  and  the  paroled  officers  are  captured  and 
brought  here? 

I  am  sure  many  more  concessions  would  have  been 
made  to  us  here,  had  it  not  been  for  the  arrival  of 
these  dishonoured  officers. 

How  I  hate,  loathe,  the  whole  miserable  busi- 
ness !  And  Russia  has  now  suffered  such  continued 
disgrace  and  defeats  that  love  of  country  may 
not  be  dead  within  me,  but  love  of  autocracy  and 


290         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

reverence  for  our  fatally  weak  ruler  are  not  within 
me  any  more.  Poor  hesitating,  terrified,  conscience- 
racked,  nerve-torn  sovereign !  I  pity  you.  Were 
there  any  hope  for  a  stronger  or  better  ruler,  in 
any  life  next  to  yours,  how  fortunate  it  would  be 
if  you  forsook  the  throne,  and  went  away  to  live 
the  quiet  life  of  a  country  squire !  But  the  burden 
is  yours.  You  must  bear  it.  You  cannot  pass  it 
to  those  less  worthy.  You  must  lead  Russia  out 
of  the  darkness  to  light.  The  talk  of  the 
"Awakening  of  China"  is  paralleled  by  the  same 
greatly-needed  Awakening  of  Russia;  and  it 
comes  more  slowly.  Ever  since  the  French  Revo- 
lution, the  wise  ones  have  known  that  a  change 
must  come  in  Russia.  Force — brutal,  pitiless  force 
— rhas  suppressed  all  aspirations  for  liberty  and  en- 
lightenment, and  foreign  conquests  have  distracted 
the  public  attention,  as  the  gladiators  and  the 
arena  did  in  old  Rome.  But  this  war  has  roused 
some  worthy  men  of  the  nobility  and  bureaucracy 
at  last  to  the  point  of  boldness.  Sviatapolk  Mirsky 
has  done  wonderful  things  already,  and  the  liberty 
of  the  press  he  has  granted  is  a  great  step  forward. 
Mertchensky  now  cries  out  for  peace  since  Russia 
has  defeated  herself.  But  out  of  defeat  may  come 
the  greatest  victory.  The  thinking  people,  up- 
right, intelligent  Russians,  may  take  heart  in  their 
sorrows. 

Grievsky  has  his  laugh  now,  but  it  is  a  bitter 


MUKDEN'S  DESPAIR  291 

laugh,  a  heart-broken  one,  when  he  considers  how 
the  English  have  feared  us  all  these  years.  "If 
the  Japanese  can  make  a  laughing-stock  of  Kuro- 
patkin,  can  turn  all  his  boasts  back  upon  his  head, 
and  make  him  personally  run — run  from  Haicheng, 
run  from  Liaoyang,  run  from  the  Shaho,  and  run 
last  and  fastest  from  Mukden — Lord!  what  that 
cold-blooded  devil  of  a  Kitchener  could  do,  with 
an  army  of  his  little  Goorkhas !  Good-bye,  Fer- 
ghana and  Kashgaria  !  Good-bye,  Trans-Caspia  !" 

<^>-  -<^y  "^>  ^> 

Thursday,  March  30th. 

With  fifty  thousand  prisoners,  they  say,  to  come 
from  Mukden,  many  are  to  be  sent  to  further 
depots  to  make  room  here.  Several  have  gone  to 
Shidzuoka,  near  Fujiyama,  but  write  back  de- 
pressingly  of  their  housing  there.  A  few  occupy 
the  villa  of  the  old  deposed  Tokugawa  shogun, 
which  is  a  labyrinth  of  small,  dark  cupboards. 
No  Cossack  officer  can  stand  upright  in  it,  when 
he  wears  his  gros  bonnet.  The  restrictions  are 
severe  in  Shidzuoka ;  no  daily  newspapers  are 
allowed,  and  the  missionaries  cannot  come  and  go 
as  here.  The  Japanese  petty  official  in  brief 
authority  is  the  same  tyrant  that  the  helpless 
suffer  from  everywhere.  I  dare  say  the  Russian 
keepers  of  the  Japanese  prisoners  at  Medved  are 
more  severe,  less  simpatica  even,  than  those  we 
chafe  against  here.  They,  too,  might  be  capable 


292         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

of  depriving  the  prisoners  of  their  musical  instru- 
ments, lest  music  foster  a  martial  spirit;  and 
might  even  prohibit  card-playing  at  the  hospital. 

Some  who  have  gone  away  write  amusing  ac- 
counts of  the  new  places  of  detention.  In  one  city 
the  prisoners  are  quartered  in  a  theatre,  and  they 
have  organised  an  opera  company  of  their  mem- 
bers. They  spend  their  days  rehearsing  the 
choruses  and  ballets  of  the  grand  opera — "Les 
Horios  aux  Enfers,"  as  they  call  the  spectacle 
they  are  about  to  produce.  The  revolving  stage 
and  its  effects  amuse  them,  and  they  plan  to  urge 
it  upon  Petersburg  impresarios.  At  another  town, 
they  are  quartered  in  the  pavilions  of  the  public 
gardens,  in  the  Zoo !  for  a  fact.  "Appropriately, 
they  have  placed  us  as  curiosities  in  the  Zoological 
Garden,"  one  writes.  "We  have  no  more  space  nor 
liberty  than  our  neighbours  the  stork  and  the 
bear." 

All  grumble  and  lament,  save  the  few  who  drive 
themselves  with  study  and  work;  studying  Japa- 
nese, studying  French,  English,  German;  trans- 
lating into  Russian  the  English  translations  of 
Japanese  fairy  tales,  novels,  and  histories;  trans- 
lating the  many  English  and  French  standard 
books  on  Japan;  as,  except  for  Metchnikoff  and 
De  Wollant,  our  Russian  literature  lacks  in  general 
works,  popular  works  on  Japan,  books  of  travels, 
impressions,  analyses,  such  as  the  English  have 


MUKDEN'S  DESPAIR  293 

in  numbers.  If  Lafcadio  Hearn  had  but  written 
in  Russian,  this  war  could  not  have  been.  Had 
the  court  and  our  intellectuals  only  read 
"Bushido"  the  war  would  have  been  prevented. 
We  are  being  punished  for  our  ignorance,  that 
is  all.  The  majority  of  Russians  thought  the 
Japanese  no  more  than  another  Turcoman  tribe — 
fish-eating  heathens.  That  is  all.  This  war  was 
to  be  merely  a  hunting  adventure  for  our  Cos- 
sacks. They  were  to  spit  the  tiny  Kakamakis  on 
their  bayonets  and  toss  them  over  their  shoulders 
as  lightly  as  so  much  hay. 

Even  in  their  treatment  of  prisoners,  how  won- 
derfully well  the  Japanese  have  managed  with 
this  great  number  of  horios.  The  officers  grumble 
that  they  are  not  allowed  the  freedom  French 
officers  had  in  German  cities  in  1870,  where  at 
Wiesbaden  and  Frankfort  they  lived  in  hotels. 
They  forget  that  there  are  no  hotels,  as  such,  in 
Matsuyama,  and  that  the  government  furnishes 
here  as  much  privacy  and  more  foreign  comforts 
than  any  tourist  can  command  in  a  tea  house; 
while  the  rank  and  file  are  in  a  heaven  of  plenty, 
cleanliness,  comfort,  and  idleness  they  never 
dreamed  of  before,  and  that  contrasts  sharply 
with  the  suffering,  the  cold,  disease,  and  starvation 
of  the  poor  French  prisoners  in  Dresden,  Magde- 
burg, Mayence,  Ulm,  and  Augsburg  in  Christian 
Germany,  in  1870. 


CHAPTER  XXXV 

THE  HAPPY  DAY 

Sunday,  April  2nd. 

TOSABURO  came  to  my  house  one  morning 
to  say  that  he  was  going  to  Hiroshima,  to 
meet  his  uncle  who  was  returning  from  Manchuria 
by  transport  the  next  day.  "And  you  know  him 
too,"  said  he.  "He  is  also  old  tomodaichi  [friend]. 
He  was  only  Colonel  Higuchi  when  you  were  in 
Tokyo,  but  now  he  is  Lieutenant-General  Baron 
Higuchi.  He  has  done  remarkable  things  in  war 
with  China;  and  was  very  remarkable  ruler  of 
Taiwan — of  Formosa,  I  mean.  Now  he  is  chief  - 
of-staff  of  Field  Marshal  Marquis  Oyama,  and 
he  is  greatest  brains  of  all  of  our  army.  Our 
Field  Marshal,  you  know,  is  quite  aged  and  very 
portly,  and  he  does  not  do  such  active  things  now. 
He  has  much  spirit,  but  his  body  is  not  so  boyful. 
He  is  the  clan  general,  we  call  him,  the  Satsuma 
military  chief.  He  is  commander  of  generals,  and 
all  young  generals  obey  him  very  peacefully. 
They  never  quarrel  at  our  headquarters  and 
oppose  each  other;  and  our  Field  Marshal  rules 
like  father  of  family,  and  tells  how  each  battle 
294 


THE  HAPPY  DAY  295 

shall  be  fought  according  to  the  plans  of  my  uncle, 
the  Lieutenant-General  Baron  Higuchi.  It  is  my 
uncle  who  has  made  this  greatest  battle  of  all  the 
world  at  Mukden.  Truly.  He  is  going  now  to 
Tokyo  to  tell  about  it  himself — Himself  tell  it  to 
our  Nippon  He'ika,  to  the  Emperor." 

"Higuchi !  Higuchi !  The  young  officer,  with 
such  very  quick  eyes  and  such  very  fine  counte- 
nance, handsome  like  an  Italian,  we  used  to  say? 
Is  that  the  one?" 

"Yes.  Yes,  that  is  the  same  one  you  used  to 
call  Italian  Colonel.  Exactly  the  same  officer.  I 
shall  tell  him  you  are  here,  and  shall  I  ask  him  any 
somethings  for  you?" 

"Oh !  I  am  very  content,  Tosaburo  scm.  Every 
one  is  very  kind  to  me.  All  I  wish  for,  you  know, 
is  that  the  danna  sari  may  soon  get  well  enough  to 
leave  the  hospital  and  come  to  my  house  to  live. 
That  is  his  fault.  He  is  so  slow.  I  say  HiaTcu! 
[hurry !]  to  him  every  day,  but  he  is  not  obedient 
like  my  old  kurumaya,  you  see."  And  we  laughed 
at  our  small  joke  immensely. 

"But,  Tosaburo,  why  do  they  not  let  the  Russian 
lady  at  Kobe,  who  was  a  soldier  and  surrendered  at 
Port  Arthur — why  do  they  not  let  her  come  down 

here  to  see  Captain  X ?"  and  then  that  young 

sprig  of  Japanese  militarism  drew  his  shoulders 
up  very  square,  made  his  countenance  severe,  and 
said :  "Oh,  mlya  sama,  she  is  not  wifes.  Not  truly 


296         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

wifes,  you  know.  And  the  Japanese  Government 
cannot  allow  shocking  things,  you  know.  If  wifes, 
all  right ;  come  to-morrow.  I  have  heard  my  high 
officers  here,  when  they  were  talking  with  French 
Consul,  say  what  it  is.  Really  shocking." 

"But,  Tosaburo,  here  are  two  priests  to  marry 
them.  Let  her  come  here.  Don't  let  them  send 
her  over  to  Shanghai." 

"Yes.  She  must  go  away,  they  have  told  Consul. 
He  cannot  marry  without  his  general's  permission, 
and  that  is  distinguished  soldier,  General  Stoessel, 
now  wearing  German  Kaiser's  merity  sword,  you 
see,  in  far  country." 

"Rubbish !  Rubbish !  General  Smirnoff  was  his 
commander  of  fortress  of  Port  Arthur.  Will  you 
please  tell  officers  that?  Only  General  Smirnoff's 
permission  in  a  letter  from  Nagoya  is  necessary. 
Tell  them.  Truly  I  say  so.  Then  the  priest  says 
ceremony,  and  it  is  all  proper  marriage,  husband 
and  wife.  Not  shocking,  shocking,  you  young 
Englishman — you  young  Plum  Pudding,  as  we 
used  to  call  those  pink-faced  children  at  Kojimachi 
Koshikan." 

Tosaburo  laughed  immoderately  at  the  old  joke, 
and,  quick  as  could  be,  said :  "Oh !  Oh !  I  shall 
do  it  all  myself.  We  shall  have  a  little  Banzai 
with  it.  We  shall  have  a  little  marry  party  at 
barracks,  just  like  that  English  lady,  you  remem- 
ber. And  we  shall  throw  shoes  and  other  vegetables 


THE  HAPPY  DAY  297 

— no,  only  rice,  when  they  go  'going-way'  as 
they  called  it.  Oh !  I  remember  that  so  well.  We 
all  thought  it  curious.  And  my  father  and  mother 
I  have  heard  talk  much  about  that  curious  foreign 
custom  since  then.  And  since  then  I  have  seen 
several  foreign  marries.  My  English  teacher  in 
Tsukiji,  she  has  had  a  marry  in  the  foreign  church 
there.  I  shall  ask  general  here  to-day  for  some 
orders,  before  I  go  to  Hiroshima  with  the  de- 
spatches. You  see.  You  look.  Soon  Russian 
soldier-girl  will  come  from  Kobe,  I  know.  I  am 
sure.  We  shall  have  a  marry  party  on  my  return. 
You  and  I  shall  be  the  nakados  [go-betweens]. 
Oh!  Good!" 

•*Q>  "s^y  •*v^>-  *Q> 

Monday,  April  3rd. 

I  found  them  shouting  "Vivas!"  and  drinking 
toasts  to  a  newly  arrived  officer  to-day,  and  they 
explained  to  me:  "He  had  charge  of  those  twin 
curses  of  war,  the  military  attaches  and  the  war 
correspondents.  It  was  a  duty  to  rightly  earn 
one  the  St.  Anne,  and  he  was  fairly  promised  that, 
if  he  would  let  his  wards  be  captured.  But  he 
could  not  lose  them.  They  always  turned  up  safe, 
always  escaped  the  enemy  by  a  single  hair.  Luck 
had  them  in  its  keeping,  until  that  night  at  Muk- 
den, when  they  told  them,  at  midnight,  that  we 
were  pushing  the  Japanese  back,  that  we  had  them 
on  the  run  then.  So  they  went  to  sleep;  and 


298          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

waked,  to  find  us  gone  and  themselves  ten  miles 
within  Japanese  lines ! — guests  of  another  head- 
quarters staff.  It  was  worth  his  getting  captured 
too,  he  thinks,  to  lose  those  beggars.  He  was 
caught  himself  at  the  Pass ;  and  so,  not  having 
reported  the  irreparable  loss  of  the  strangers  in 
person,  he  may  not  get  his  St.  Anne." 

Some  queer  sorts  of  officers  have  been  brought 
to  light  by  the  Japanese  dragnets  thrown  out  to 
our  army.  I  have  been  astounded  to  hear  of  mili- 
tary officers  who  could  not  read  or  write,  as  unedu- 
cated as  mujiks.  They  are  survivals  of  an  old 
system,  and  of  course  would  not  have  ever  left 
Siberia  but  for  this  war.  We  take  the  ignorance 
of  the  rank  and  file  as  a  matter  of  course,  but  we 
feel  it  as  a  bitter  taunt  when  the  Japanese  order 
that  those  of  the  prisoners  who  cannot  read  or 
write  shall  learn  to  do  so  now.  Japan  cannot  per- 
mit so  many  ignorant  members  in  one  community ! 
Those  who  can  read  and  write  must  teach  the 
others!  At  Marugame  and  Himeji  prisons,  the 
Rurik  sailors  have  already  learned  to  read,  and 
R is  a  volunteer  teacher  already. 

Another  bonne  bouche  came  from  one  of  the 
Protestant  missionaries  who  made  one  of  her  school- 
boys read  to  her,  in  English,  the  gogai  that  came 
out  during  the  great  battle.  He  reads :  "Kuro- 
patkin  has  telephoned  to  his  Emperor,  'I  am  inside 
of  the  Japanese.  Please  forgive.'  '  Grievsky 


THE  HAPPY  DAY  299 

appreciated  this,  but  howls  with  rage  to  think 
that  Kuropatkin  is  not  literally  inside  of  the 
Japanese — "inside  of  them  as  we  are  here — inside 
of  a  Japanese  prison!  Ah!  He  and  his  carload 
of  icons  came  to  dictate  a  treaty  of  peace  in 
Tokyo !  It  will  be  at  Tomsk,  more  likely.  But  I 
forget.  He  has  taken  oath  not  to  retreat  beyond 
the  Urals.  Quite  true.  Quite  true.  It  is  his  dis- 
tinguished, world-renowned  successor,  the  well- 
known  General  Linievitch — 'Papa  Linievitch' — 
who  will  advance  boldly  westward !  'To  Peters- 
burg !'  inscribed  on  his  banners.  Bah !  a  plague  on 
all.  Even  the  weather  prophet,  Demchinski,  can 
rail  at  them.  He  and  Mestchersky  are  now  our 
military  critics,  under  Sviatopolk  Mirsky's  free 
press  rules !  Ah !  Gott,  is  the  world  all  mad,  or 
am  I?" 

<Z*  <2r  <2>  -Ox 

Tuesday,  April  4th. 

And  now !  Straight  from  the  clear  sky,  as  a 
bolt  from  the  blue,  comes  an  order  for  Vladimir 
to  be  removed  from  the  hospital  to  my  home !  At 
once !  For  a  fact ! 

While  I  was  still  at  my  luncheon  yesterday,  a 
bicycle  messenger  brought  me  a  note  from  head- 
quarters to  come  to  the  chancery  at  two  o'clock, 
or  earlier,  if  possible.  In  the  agitation,  I  hastened 
there  at  once,  fearing  everything.  "Oh!"  said 
His  Insolence,  the  official  interpreter:  "You  are 


300         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

ordered  to  remove  the  prisoner,  Staff -Colonel  von 
Theill,  to  your  dwelling,  and  there  act  as  Volunteer 
Red  Cross  nurse.  You  must  give  your  oath  to 
observe  the  regulations  prescribed  as  to  visits, 
correspondence,  and  telegrams. 

And  the  interview  was  over. 

I  could  hardly  utter  my  thanks,  much  less  ask 
questions.  To  turn  my  tragic  joy  to  real  comedy, 
up  stepped  the  "Homunculus,"  as  we  call  him,  the 
netsuke,  the  breloque,  the  one  whom  Grievsky  vows 
he  will  wear  away  on  his  watch  chain.  He  is  the 
tiniest  Japanese  I  have  ever  seen,  with  almost  no 
legs  at  all.  Well,  up  rose  this  living  netsuke, 
bowed,  opened  the  door  for  me,  and  said:  "I  will 
show  you  the  way !" 

Oh !    It  was  droU ! 

I  walked  slowly,  thinking  of  myself  as  in  a 
dream,  and  then  I  fairly  ran,  burst  in  upon  Vladi- 
mir, and  called  him  to  "get  ready  quick,  quick. 
Get  up  and  come  with  me!"  And  he  almost  did 
so,  in  his  sudden  alarm  at  my  irruption. 

Soon  after,  the  chief -surgeon  came,  and  formally 
said  to  us:  "By  telegraphic  order  of  His  Excel- 
lency, the  Minister  of  War,  the  Staff-Colonel  von 
Theill  is  to  be  immediately  removed  to  the  dwelling 
of  Princess  Sophia  von  Theill,  and  to  be  treated 
with  the  highest  consideration,  at  the  request  of 
Lieutenant-General  Baron  Higuchi,  who  sends  his 
compliments  and  further  messages  by  letter." 


THE  HAPPY  DAY  301 

What  an  excitement  there  was  there  then ! 
Vladimir's  half  of  a  man  servant,  the  nurses  and 
D ,  all  turned  to  and  bundled  up  his  posses- 
sions; and  we  were  so  wild  with  selfish  joy  that 
it  was  only  when  I  saw  Lyov's  wistful  face,  and 
then  noticed  the  others'  blank  dismay,  that  I 
realised  how  I  was  robbing  them. 

Within  an  hour  Vladimir  was  bundled  up, 
packed  into  a  double  jinrikisha,  with  many  pillows 
around  him  and  three  coolies  to  pull,  push,  and 
steady  him,  and  rode  out  of  the  gate  ahead  of  me. 
Out  into  the  open  air !  Out  into  comparative  free- 
dom and  private  life!  His  first  outing  since  he 
was  carried  in  on  a  stretcher,  believing  himself 
about  to  die. 

Ah !  Tosaburo !  Tosaburo !  My  friend  indeed ! 
And  the  Italian  Colonel!  Bushido  is  surely  the 
living  creed  of  my — enemies? 


CHAPTER  XXXVI 

AT  HOME— COLONEL  AND  MRS. 
VLADIMIR  VON  THEILL 

Wednesday,  April  5th. 

TT  was  Tosaburo  who  had  done  it  all — my  jolly 
•*•  little  knias  san,  and  when  he  returned  to  duty, 
he  came  to  see  us  straight  from  headquarters.  He 
brought  the  letter  conveying  the  formal  compli- 
ments of  his  Italian  uncle,  who  begged  to  be  remem- 
bered, and  to  know  how  he  could  serve  me,  etc.,  etc. 
But  everything  was  done;  all  that  heart  could 
wish  for.  I  could  only  express  my  profound  thanks 
again  and  again.  Then  every  one  came  to  con- 
gratulate us ;  and  Vladimir  had  hardly  drunk  in 
all  his  new  surroundings,  seen  half  of  my  pretty 
things,  and  only  begun  to  look  at  the  garden,  when 
callers  came.  Every  one  called;  from  the  gov- 
ernor and  the  commandant  down  to  the  last  trades- 
man and  coolie;  and  the  startled  house-boy  asked 
Anna  if  he  was  to  give  a  the  complet  to  every 
kitchen  caller  also.  "By  all  means,"  said  Anna. 
"This  is  our  Banzai,  our  matsuri.  A  feast  to 
every  one,  certainly.  The  Barina  would  be  very 
angry  if  you  did  not  celebrate  the  danna  san's 
302 


AT  HOME  303 

coming  home.  Run  and  get  more  mochi,  and  more 
sugar-flowers  quickly,  and  red  rice  in  plenty.'* 

We  were  touched  to  the  heart  by  the  simple 
gifts  that  came  to  us  from  all  these  humble  folk. 
The  jinrikisha  coolies  came  with  their  head  man  to 
present  a  great  bouquet  of  plum  and  quince  blos- 
soms arranged  in  classic  style,  and  to  wish  good 
health  to  the  danna  san.  The  butcher,  the  baker, 
the  greengrocer,  the  old  eggwoman,  the  vegetable 
dealer  from  the  country,  the  fishman,  every  one 
who  in  any  way  purveyed  to  my  little  household, 
came  to  lay  presents  on  the  sunny  engawa.  Vladi- 
mir's blanched  face  in  the  long  chair  was  a  picture 
of  pleased  content  and  interest  in  all  of  them  and 
their  gifts  of  sugar,  oranges,  eggs,  towels,  sweets, 
flowers.  Whenever  there  were  no  Japanese  in 
sight,  I  swooped  down  upon  him  with  my  caresses, 
my  forbidden  kisses,  by  thousands ;  for  one  could 
not  be  demonstrative  at  the  hospital  with  other 
people  always  in  hearing,  and  a  curtain  lifted  at 
any  moment  without  ceremony.  To  have  him  in 
my  own  home!  our  own  home!  all  in  my  own  care, 
every  hour  was  rapture  to  even  think  of. 

And  this  was  a  home  at  last — our  home.  With 
Vladimir  within  its  walls,  I  should  not  care  if  I 
were  never  permitted  to  go  abroad. 

Anna  would  fairly  have  killed  our  patient  with 
kindness,  with  all  the  delicacies  of  the  Japanese 
market,  all  the  concoctions  that  her  life  in  Ger- 


304         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

many,  England,  Spain,  France,  Italy,  and  Russia 
had  taught  her  to  make  in  the  kitchens  of  those 
countries.  Poor  Vladimir's  thin  face  glowed  with 
pleasure,  from  morning  till  night.  He  closed  his 
eyes  and  opened  them  sharply,  to  see  that  things 
were  what  they  seemed  to  be;  he  pinched  himself 
to  find  if  he  were  surely  awake ;  and  he  threw  salt, 
and  did  every  known  thing  to  capture  and  retain 
good  luck  beside  him. 

"Come  here,  Sophie,  and  stay  beside  me.  I  am 
afraid  to  have  you  out  of  my  sight  for  a  minute, 
lest  something  happen  and  you  never  return.  We 
surely  are  as  happy  now  as  we  ever  were  on  the 
Janiculum.  To  look  out  at  this  little  stage  garden, 
this  piece  of  painted  scenery  of  yours,  is  pleasure 
complete.  I  should  never  dare  step  off  the  edge 
of  this  engawa,  though.  I  don't  know  my  way 
around  among  the  pasteboard  rocks  and  the  mil- 
liner's trees,  and  looking-glass  lake,  as  do  these 
Japanese  theatrical  artists  you've  engaged  for 
the  day's  performance  to  amuse  me.  If  I  stepped 
out  there,  my  foot  would  go  through  somewhere, 
and  the  whole  thing  come  down  in  wreck  and  dust. 
Ah !  but  it  is  perfect !  A  perfect  illusion  as  one 
sits  here  and  looks  at  it.  Very  like  a  garden.  I 
only  want  a  hand  magnifying  glass  to  study  its 
detail.  Ah!  I  see  at  last.  The  Japanese  land- 
scape gardener  first  held  a  Claude  Lorraine  glass 
in  his  hand,  and  made  his  garden  in  those  proper- 


AT  HOME  305 

tions.  Beautiful !  Beautiful !  and  the  angelic 
little  pink  kaido  trees  in  their  pots !  Ah !  it  is  too 
much !  too  much  beauty  !" 


Friday,  April  7th. 

I  went  to  the  barracks  to-day  and  I  had  such  a 
welcome  as  quite  turned  my  head.  They  had  so 
much  to  tell  me  of  how  they  missed  Vladimir ;  and 
all  that  had  happened  in  the  forty-eight  hours  of 
his  absence ;  how  the  new  chapel  was  finished,  and 
could  not  be  consecrated  this  week  because  the 
priest  had  to  go  to  Marugame  to  bury  a  poor 

sailor  horio;    of  how  Andrew  Y would  soon 

be  put  out  to  a  temple ;  and  the  greatest  news  of 
all — how  the  girl-soldier  bride  was  actually  on  her 
way  down  from  Kobe !  Moreover,  these  good  gos- 
sips knew  that  a  conscript  regiment  was  to  leave 
for  Vladivostok  to-morrow;  another  awful  siege 
of  horrors  to  begin,  and  that  ten  conscripts  had 
been  shot  at  Osaka  for  refusing  to  go  to  war,  poor 
boys.  Also,  they  had  heard  that  the  twelve  thou- 
sand Japanese  prisoners  in  Russia  were  to  be  im- 
mediately exchanged  for  all  the  officers  and  a  few 
hundred  of  the  Russian  soldiers  now  in  Japan.  All 
are  anxious  to  return  to  Europe — Europe,  where 
the  political  situation  causes  some  of  them  more 
concern  than  the  military  mess  in  Manchuria. 
With  the  winter  industrial  strikes  more  severe  than 


306         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

ever,  rioting  at  every  spot  of  mobilisation,  the 
sovereign  swayed  by  one  faction  and  another  each 
day,  and  his  Mephistopheles  cousin  in  Germany 
frankly  deserting  our  cause  and  criticising  us 
openly,  the  darkest  days  are  coming  to  Holy 
Russia.  We  look  at  each  other  blankly,  and  won- 
der if  the  long-prophesied  and  justly  retributive 
revolution  is  upon  us  ;  if  Russia  shall  begin  her 
era  of  Enlightenment  only  in  bloodshed.  But 
what  other  people  in  the  world  have  secured  their 
freedom  and  liberty  without  rivers  of  blood? 
Only  the  Japanese. 


Monday,  April  10th. 

Vladimir  looked  stupefaction  when  I  said  this 
the  other  night  while  reading  him  a  curious  little 
brochure:  "Agitated  Japan."  There  was  a  little 
bloodshed  to  put  this  Emperor  in  power,  to  restore 
him  his  rightful  authority  so  long  usurped  by  the 
military  ruler,  but  the  rights  of  the  people  and 
the  Constitution  were  voluntarily  conceded  them. 
The  Emperor  promised  them  suffrage,  a  parlia- 
ment, and  a  constitution  within  a  fixed  number  of 
years,  all  of  his  own  accord,  and  he  kept  his  prom- 
ises to  the  letter.  Many  residents  think  the  Japa- 
nese not  yet  ready  for  parliamentary  government  ; 
but,  with  a  restricted  suffrage  and  an  upper  house 
of  peers,  there  are  safeguards,  and  the  people  are 


AT  HOME  307 

learning.  When  the  Emperor  declared  the  new 
order,  he  addressed  a  rescript  to  his  people  on 
education,  a  remarkable  paper,  in  which  he 
hoped  that  soon  there  would  be  no  village  with  an 
ignorant  family,  and  no  family  with  an  ignorant 
member.  And  to  see  the  flocks  of  school  children 
on  the  streets  with  their  books  every  morning,  that 
hope  must  now  be  realised.  The  Emperor  foresaw 
that  universal  education  was  necessary  to  a  mod- 
ern, enlightened  order,  to  make  his  people  able 
to  compete  with  western  nations,  and  there  has 
been  a  fury  of  education  for  these  forty  years. 
Compulsory  education  is  a  complete  misnomer,  for 
the  people  clamour  for  more  schools  and  for  higher 
schools,  and  they  are  given  them.  The  Japanese 
borrowed  the  free  school  system  outright  from 
America,  and  all  the  empire  went  to  school.  Since 
western  learning  was  so  necessary  to  compete  with 
western  people,  they  set  to  and  acquired  it.  There 
was  no  Pobedonostseff  to  forbid  and  to  close 
schools,  limit  the  number  of  pupils,  exclude  the 
Jews,  and  forbid  the  Poles  and  Finns  to  learn 
their  own  language.  Instead  of  thirty-two  thou- 
sand school  teachers  for  that  many  new  school- 
houses  in  Russian  villages,  Von  Plehve  gave  thirty- 
two  thousand  secret  police  to  spy  upon  the  villages, 
and  see  if  any  reform  agents  or  ideas  found  en- 
trance. We  have  wise  statesmen  and  educators — 
philanthropists,  who  strive  with  all  their  influence 


308         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

against  the  police  and  the  synod,  to  lift  the  cloud 
of  ignorance  that  rests  upon  the  Russian  peasantry, 
an  ignorance  so  dense,  so  appalling,  so  sickening 
and  hopeless  that  I  have  no  heart  in  considering 
its  alleviation — but,  all  who  would  do  good  to 
Russia,  and  save  the  ignorant  from  the  evil  of 
socialist  ideas,  are  hampered  and  hounded,  ter- 
rorised by  janitors  in  the  cities,  by  Von  Plehve's 
police  in  the  country,  and  there  is  no  hope  in  us. 
We  feel  the  hopelessness  of  the  struggle,  our  help- 
lessness; yet  we  know  a  change  is  coming.  But 
long  before  that  may  the  war  end,  or  Vladimir 
get  an  exchange  with  one  of  the  Japanese  officers 
at  Medved. 

Vladimir  smiles  grimly  over  the  news  from 
Russia  that  we  read  daily  in  our  Kobe  newspaper. 
Since  the  Zemsky  Sobor  was  permitted,  then  for- 
bidden, and  finally  let  assemble  to  present  a  peti- 
tion for  reform  and  a  constitution,  the  official 
mind  at  St.  Petersburg  has  been  a  mere  shuttle- 
cock. Since  "Vladimir's  Day,"  that  unfortunate 
22ml  of  January,  rescript  has  followed  upon 
rescript  from  the  irresolute,  soft-hearted  sovereign 
at  Tsarskoe,  who  hides  in  his  guarded  palace  like 
the  Sultan  in  the  Yildiz  Kiosque — even  more  a 
prisoner,  more  in  fear  of  his  own  subjects,  perhaps ; 
since  the  Sultan  does  go  guarded  once  a  week  to 
Selamlik,  and  Nicholas  does  not  stir  abroad  at 
all.  There  were  rumours  of  flight  from  palace  to 


AT  HOME  309 

palace,  of  the  desperate  illness  of  the  infant  Czare- 
vitch, all  of  which  are  fortunately  contradicted. 
But  the  autocratic  government  wavers  from  day  to 
day,  and  in  our  frightened  hearts  we  wonder  if  it 
is  not  surely  tottering ;  if  this  is  not  the  end  of  the 
dynasty — Nicholas,  the  last  of  the  Romanoffs. 
The  few  family  letters  that  come  to  any  one  from 
Petersburg  direct,  are  full  of  forebodings.  One  of 
the  officers  at  Oguri  has  word  of  the  sacking  of  his 
estates  by  the  peasants ;  and  another  hears  that 
his  student  son  was  killed  in  a  charge  of  Cossacks 
in  Moscow  streets;  and  the  old  Colonel  hears  of 
the  death  of  his  son  in  a  sortie  in  Manchuria. 
Cheerful  thoughts  some  of  my  patients  have  to 
help  their  convalescence!  Another  weeps  as  he 
looks  at  me,  for  he  has  not  had  a  word  or  letter 
from  his  wife  since  he  came  here,  ten  months  ago. 
He  knows  the  man  who  fills  her  life — a  brother 
officer  who  could  control  his  exchange. 

The  soldier-girl  bride  has  come  down  from  Kobe ! 
She  stays  at  a  Japanese  tea  house,  near  where  the 
other  Russian  ladies  are  living,  on  the  other  side 
of  the  chateau,  and  it  begins  to  look  still  more  like 
the  romance  of  a  yellow-covered  novel.  His  Japa- 
nese smile  was  a  loud  chuckle,  all  the  while  Tosa- 
buro  was  telling  me  about  her.  "Oh!  I  wish  you 
would  look,  and  tell  me  how  you  think.  I  cannot 
say  that  word  beauty,  when  I  see  her ;  but  maybe 
you  will  tell  me.  She  has  short  hairs  like  a  man, 


310          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

or  just  like  a  widow.  Oh!  She  does  not  look  like 
you,"  and,  with  childlike  naivete,  Tosaburo  put  his 
finger  on  his  own  well-cut  nose  and  flattened  it  down 
to  mujik  type,  and  squinted  his  eyes  smaller.  We 
both  laughed,  and  Vladimir  declared  it  enough; 
that  he  saw  her,  as  in  a  photograph. 

Tosaburo  only  knew  that  she  had  arrived ;  that 
the  French  Consul  in  Kobe  had  had  her  supplied 
with  proper  clothing — a  trousseau — and  that  they 
were  at  their  wits'  end  at  the  headquarters  here 
as  to  what  to  do  about  it  all.  "J'y  suis  et  j'y  reste" 
was  her  motto  as  much  as  Alexeieff's.  After  some 
days  she  was  permitted  to  regularly  visit  her 
lover,  and  he  was  promised  a  transfer  to  another 
city  where  he  should  live  in  his  own  private  house, 
with  his  faithful  bride.  I  saw  her  several  times, 
in  the  shops  and  on  the  street ;  I  met  her,  too,  at 
the  barracks ;  and  then,  one  day,  Tosaburo  told  me 
that  they  had  had  "the  marry  party"  in  the  little 
chapel  at  the  barracks,  and  that  they  had  gone  off 
with  twenty  officers  to  a  city  on  the  west  coast. 
Exit  Romance !  Cupid  without  wings. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII 
LOVE  LAUGHS  AT  PRISON  BARS 

Sunday,  April  23rd. 

WORD  has  come  down  from  the  higher  officers 
at  Nagoya  that  the  Czar  will  not  ask  for 
the  exchange  of  prisoners;  that:  "He — does — not 
— need — his — officers"!  but,  that  he  "Prays  God 
will  soften  the  pains  of  captivity,  and  quicken  the 
arrival  of  the  time  when  they  may  return  home !" 

It  came  to  me  like  a  blow  in  the  face. 

"Let  Nicholas  himself  quicken  the  time  of  our 
return,"  said  Vladimir — "Exchange  us,  or  make 
peace — Peace  on  any  terms  he  can  get,  as  Mest- 
chersky  says — Port  Arthur  gone,  Mukden  gone, 
the  fleet  gone,  Kuropatkin  fallen,  and  Japanese 
prison  lists  and  parole  lists  our  army's  best  regis- 
ter, for  what  should  we  further  expose  our  in- 
capacity and  rottenness?  for  a  few  flour  mills 
and  a  frozen  harbour  ?  Let  us  get  back  to  Russia, 
and  conquer  ourselves,  defeat  the  real  enemy  en- 
trenched in  the  palaces  and  ministries  of  Peters- 
burg." 

To-day  the  Consul  appeared  for  his  domiciliary 
visit,  as  he  called  it,  having  been  surprised  to  find 
311 


AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

us  gone  from  the  barracks.  "M.  Siemenoff  goes 
to  Kioto  next  week,  I  suppose  you  know,"  said  the 
Consul,  smiling,  and  we  both  started  with  surprise. 

"No !  No !"  I  wailed  at  the  thought  of  losing 
my  special  charge  and  protege.  "But  Madame  la 
Comtesse,  what  happens  to  her?"  I  asked. 

The  Consul  broke  out  in  a  great  laugh, 
shrugged  his  shoulders,  and  made  gestures  with 
both  hands;  and  then  my  slow  wits  wakened,  and 
I  joined  in  Vladimir's  and  the  Consul's  laughter 
at  my  stupidity. 

Oh !  Those  clever  young  people !  How  dull 
we  old  people  grow.  Of  course  the  Consul  is 
Cupid's  messenger,  the  Deus  ex  machma,  who 
arranges  all,  whom  the  Contessa  consults.  And 
we  had  thought  the  silence  so  ominous !  Only  the 
daily  post  cards  coming,  with  no  messages  on  them 
at  all.  Telepathy,  of  course. 

And  while  we  have  gone  on  in  our  little  routine 
here,  immersed  in  ourselves  and  our  daily  small 
happenings,  the  Contessa  herself  has  been  down  to 
Hong  Kong,  and  the  Russian  Consul  has  cabled 
to  Petersburg  for  official  and  family  sanction,  the 
permission  of  the  commandant  of  Lyov's  corps  du 
garde,  to  the  marriage. 

"Then,"  I  asked,  "how  did  that  shower  of  post 
cards  keep  on  coming  from  Kobe  if  the  Contessa 
was  in  Hong  Kong?" 

"Ah!"  said  the  agent  of  romance,  "my  office 


LOVE  LAUGHS  AT  PRISON  BARS     313 

boy  did  that.  A  large  packet  lay  ready  addressed 
on  my  table,  and  when  he  dusted  my  desk  each 
morning  he  took  the  top  one  off  and  put  it  in  the 
post  box.  That  saved  him  from  dusting  it,  you 
see,  an  automatic  beneficence." 

Also  he  gave  us  the  news  that  Captain  Siemenoff 
is  to  be  removed  to  the  Kioto  district,  and  there 
permitted  to  dwell  with  his  own  family.  His 
family  !  His  family  !  Vladimir  and  I  laughed.  I 
wanted  to  rush  to  the  barracks  and  see  Lyov  at 
once,  but  it  was  late,  the  Consul  was  weary  and 
wanted  to  rest  the  hour  or  so  with  us,  until  time  to 
take  the  train  to  Takahama  for  the  evening  boat 
to  Kobe.  And  anyhow,  as  he  described  it  to  me, 
Lyov  was  steeped  in  joy  and  reveries  so  profound 
that  no  one  could  disturb  him.  "He  can  be  happy 
alone  with  himself  now,"  said  the  Consul.  "You 
need  not  go  near  him.  But  ah !  la  Comtesse! 
What  cleverness !  what  force !  what  ability !  Such 
a  clear  head.  She  is  more  like  an  American 
almost.  And  it  was  the  old  American  Minister 
who  has  helped  and  advised  her.  Her  own  uncle, 
M.  V Anglais,  would  not  hear  to  it  at  first.  He 
would  forbid  the  banns ;  he  would  not  permit  them 
to  be  posted  in  any  British  edifice  in  Japan,  nor 
would  any  Church  of  England  clergyman  perform 
the  marriage,  he  declared.  And  Madame  la  Com- 
tesse announced  her  prospective  baptism  by  the 
Russian  bishop  in  his  guarded  retirement  at 


314         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

Tsuruga  Dai,  and  that  her  Russification  would 
be  concluded  by  a  Japanese  priest  in  the  Greek 
church  at  Kioto !" 

"The  American  Minister  conducted  the  nego- 
tiations, the  pourparlers.  He  argued  with  the 
islander  uncle,  and  temporised  with  the  scandal- 
ised islander  aunt,  who  wrung  her  hands  and  cried : 
'Oh,  what  will  the  Japanese  say?'  I  suppose  she 
will  never  get  a  special  decoration  from  the  Crown 
now.  So  this  brave  old  man  from  the  Virginias 
faced  the  English  aunt  and  bearded  his  colleague, 
the  English  lion  of  an  uncle;  consulted  with  my 
chief,  and  even  went  down  to  Kioto  to  see  how  the 
convert  was  proceeding  with  her  novitiate.  He 
told  me  to  'hustle,'  if  you  comprehend  that  droll 
word;  and  I  have  hustled,  he  has  hustled,  she  has 
hustled,  and  it  is  only  the  distinguished  pris- 
oner who  has  been  idle  and  has  not  hustled — Tout 
le  monde  out  hustle.  Heavens !  What  a  bride ! 
What  beauty !  What  distinction  !  What  ability ! 
and  riches,  besides !  The  uncle  has  only  now  in- 
sisted that  there  should  be  an  ante-nuptial  con- 
tract, in  which  Captain  Siemenoff  should  waive  all 
participation  in  her  estate.  There  have  been 
cablings  and  signatures  of  papers  in  numbers  at 
Tokyo,  and  to-day  Captain  Siemenoff  has  signed 
away  any  control  of  her  property  in  Canada.  I 
have  brought  the  papers,  and  your  Lieutenant 
Kato  has  witnessed  the  signature.  He  pledged 


LOVE  LAUGHS  AT  PRISON  BARS     315 

himself  also  to  bestow  upon  her  certain  properties 
in  jewels  upon  his  return  to  Russia,  and  voila! 
It  is  all.  It  is  finished.  It  rests  only  for  Captain 
Siemenoff  to  reach  Kioto  with  his  confreres  in 
captivity,  to  give  his  pledges  for  observing  the 
regulations  while  in  separate  residence;  to  meet 
Madame  la  Comtesse  at  the  church  altar,  and  then 
drive  to  the  villa  at  Fushimi,  which  I  have  leased 
for  her." 


Friday,  April  28th. 

I  have  been  to  see  Sandy  von  Rathroff,  and, 
having  sent  word  ahead,  that  young  agitator  was 
awaiting  me  among  the  tombstones,  with  samo- 
var and  teacups  ready.  He  had  even  a  lemon  to 
grace  the  occasion,  and  we  had  a  nice  little  tete-a- 
tete  under  whispering  pines  on  the  softest  of  spring 
days.  With  Lyov  gone,  Sandy  becomes  my  par- 
ticular charge. 

Now  that  mild  weather  has  come,  the  casts  are 
off  Vladimir's  knee,  and  he  is  ordered  to  sit  erect  in 
a  chair  properly,  and  begin  to  walk.  The  dressing 
gowns  are  cast  away,  and  my  invalid  emerges  from 
his  chrysalis,  and  dines  in  a  dinner  coat  like  any 
other  gentleman.  Half  of  trading  Nagasaki  has 
moved  up  to  Matsuyama  with  its  wares  for 
foreign  custom,  and  the  tailors  and  shirt  makers 
are  doing  a  great  business.  Modern  curios, 


316         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

hideous  coarse  embroideries,  rubbishy  metal  and 
lacquer  work,  and  gaudy  porcelains  have  come  in 
quantity  to  tempt  the  idle  officers;  and,  oh!  sad 
commentary  on  the  horios'  taste  and  knowledge! 
are  bought  up  rapidly  at  prodigious  prices. 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII 
THE  RUSSIAN  ARMADA 

Sunday,  May  21st. 

THE  departure  of  Lyov  last  week  has  left  us 
a  little  sad.  He  was  a  link  with  our  past 
life,  and  represented  to  us  our  happier  days,  when 
Russia  was  a  great  power,  and  we  were  but  a  pair 
of  discontented  Finnish  subjects  sulking,  as  our 
former  colleagues  thought,  in  idleness  in  Rome,  be- 
cause Vladimir  had  not  received  the  envoyship 
so  long  due  him  and  so  clearly  promised  him. 

The  two  fleets  have  left  Cochin  China,  have 
joined,  and  are  approaching  Japan.  We  are  all 
tense  with  excitement.  Von  Woerffel  and  his  naval 
friends  are  wrought  up  to  such  a  pitch  that  a 
street  peddler's  cry  nearly  throws  them  into 
spasms.  They  hardly  sleep  at  night,  feeling  that 
the  crisis  approaches,  that  the  whole  war  now 
hangs  upon  Ro j  estvensky ;  that  there  must  be 
victory  and  our  release — or  defeat  and  our  re- 
lease by  a  shameful  peace.  All  Dairinji  is  a  de- 
bating club,  and  those  naval  horios  argue  all  day 
and  all  night  upon  the  probable  course  of  the  fleet 
after  it  leaves  the  China  Sea.  "But  suppose  he 
317 


318         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

meets  Togo's  whole  fleet  when  he  tries  raiding  that 
bay  full  of  unarmoured  transports  at  Dalny !" 
says  Vladimir,  when  Von  Woerffel  has  outlined  a 
plan  of  action  for  the  Baltic  fleet. 

"Ah!  he  expects  to  meet  it  somewhere,  does  he 
not?  He  has  not  come  out  here  to  avoid  Togo's 
fleet,  and  only  make  a  practice  cruise.  Let  him  do 
some  damage  first,  to  make  sure.  It  is  a  pity  he 
could  not  run  into  Kiaochau  and  help  the  Czare- 
vitch out.  Soon  his  uncertainty  will  be  ended. 
Victory  for  the  Baltic  fleet,  and  our  term  will  be 
short.  Defeat — ah !  we  may  prepare  to  stay  here 
forever — forever  then." 

Poor  Sandy  von  Rathroff  is  keyed  to  the  same 
pitch  of  excitement  as  the  rest  of  us,  at  the  coming 
of  the  long-awaited  deliverance,  and  at  times  is 
loyally  Russian.  I  rallied  him  in  a  shop  the  other 
day  on  his  plan  of  going  to  America  when  he  is 
released,  remaining  there  as  a  teacher  of  lan- 
guages, and  marrying  some  heiress  with  dollars 
and  a  big  estate.  Poor  boy !  he  gets  wofully  home- 
sick and  heartsick  at  times.  We  spoke  of  Japa- 
nese patriotism,  the  pure  love  of  country,  and 
he  burst  out  feelingly:  "That  is  what  I  envy  the 
Japanese.  If  I  only  could  love  my  country !  In- 
stead, I  have  only  hatred  for  Russia,  for  those  who 
rule  Russia,  who  are  Russia.  Sixty  thousand  of 
the  best  blood  and  brains  of  Russia  were  unjustly 
and  brutally  driven  out  of  it  in  two  years  by 


THE  RUSSIAN  ARMADA  319 

Sipiaguin.  Sixteen  thousand  intelligent  men  were 
exiled  from  Petersburg  that  spring  they  arrested 
me.  Ah !  it  is  sickening  to  think  of  in  this  era  of 
civilisation.  We  are  no  better  than  the  Persians 
or  the  Afghans,  as  far  as  honest  or  intelligent 
government  goes.  We  persecute  learning,  educa- 
tion, intelligence.  We  punish  and  degrade  where 
civilised  countries  honour  and  promote.  We  send 
all  the  brains  and  ability  of  Russia  to  vegetate, 
to  drag  out  useless,  embittered  lives  in  the 
Caucasus  and  Siberia.  Physicians,  surgeons,  even 
artists  and  musicians  are  exiled  at  the  whim  of 
some  ignorant,  drunken  mujik,  temporarily  ex- 
alted by  a  uniform.  Von  Plehve  is  type  of  them. 
His  creatures  are  no  different  from  him — base  in- 
grates  all,  who  like  Von  Plehve  would  denounce  and 
ruin  the  humane  couple  who  took  him  as  a  starving 
waif,  reared  and  educated  him.  In  all  Russia, 
there  seems  no  figure  worthy  of  respect.  Au- 
tocracy has  sunk  to  the  lowest  dregs ;  and  the  very 
scum  of  the  well-dressed,  but  truly  ignorant 
classes,  are  in  office,  are  ruling  everywhere  in  the 
empire." 

<^x  ^S-  <ix  "s> 

Tuesday,  May  30th. 

Our  suspense  is  ended.  The  usual  thing,  quite 
the  expected  thing,  has  happened.  Rojestvensky 
has  failed — so  egregiously,  completely,  abjectly, 
that  we  are  content  to  know  the  bare  first  facts 


320         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

without  detail  or  explanation.  As  if  there  could 
be  any  explanation  ! 

Admiral  Togo's  telegram  is  enough  :  "The  main 
force  of  the  enemy's  Second  and  Third  Squadrons 
has  been  almost  completely  annihilated.  There- 
fore, please  be  at  ease." 

"Please  be  at  ease  !  Please  be  at  ease  !"  What 
a  complete,  all-embracing,  final  expression  is  this 
of  the  Japanese  admiral  !  What  a  convincing 
message  to  sovereign  and  people! 


Friday,  June  2nd. 

Poor  Vladimir,  who  had  improved  greatly  in  his 
general  tone  of  late,  is  now  sunk  in  the  uttermost 
despair.  He  has  taken  to  the  long  chair,  and  lies 
with  his  eyes  closed  half  the  time.  They  are 
reddened  and  swimming  with  tears,  and  he  has 
slipped  back  weeks,  months  almost  in  his  physical 
condition,  in  these  three  days.  The  street  sounds, 
the  bells  of  the  gogai  boys,  cause  him  pain,  and  I 
can  see  him  quiver  as  the  joyful  clang  and  clash 
of  the  bells  of  the  fleet-footed  news  runners 
approach,  pass,  and  die  away  down  the  street.  We 
have  no  wish  to  go  out,  to  walk  anywhere,  to  look 
upon  the  radiant  Japanese  faces  and  the  sun- 
burst of  decorations,  the  unbroken  lines  of  flags  and 
lanterns,  and  red  and  white  striped  festal  curtains 
that  now  line  the  streets.  We  have  no  wish  to  meet 


THE  RUSSIAN  ARMADA  321 

our  countrymen ;  to  note  the  signs  of  woe  in  their 
faces ;  to  talk  over  and  speculate  upon  this  last 
crowning  infamy  and  disgrace.  There  is  no 
longer  question  of  how  it  could  happen.  We  know 
too  well  that  it  is  the  same  old  story  of  unpre- 
paredness,  want  of  prearrangement,  of  unfitness, 
inability.  Rojestvensky  was  as  a  child  with  a  fleet 
of  toy  ships,  when  he  sailed  head  on  into  Togo's 
trap,  and  let  the  Japanese  batter  him  by  day,  and 
torpedo  him  by  night,  and  gather  up  the  frag- 
ments of  the  great  fleet  and  bring  them  to  Sasebo. 
Not  since  the  destruction  of  the  Spanish  Armada 
in  Europe,  and  of  Kublai  Khan's  fleet  here  on  these 
very  same  shores,  has  there  been  anything 
approaching  this  one-sided  naval  battle.  Victory 
was  all  to  the  Japanese  from  the  start,  and  the 
work  went  on  like  a  battue  of  pheasants  in  an 
English  park. 

And  the  surrenders !  Oh !  disgrace  of  all  dis- 
graces. Nebogatoff  hands  over  a  fleet  of  ships, 
and  lives  on!  Surely  the  Japanese  are  right  in 
their  contempt  of  those  who  fear  death  more  than 
dishonour.  Soon  we  shall  have  some  of  these 
precious  Baltic-ers  here.  And  how  shall  we  re- 
ceive them? 

We  hear  that  the  Cossacks  and  sailors  at  Cho- 
enji  sent  up  a  mighty  cheer  when  they  heard  of 
the  defeat,  because — it  meant  the  end  of  the  war 
and  their  speedy  return  to  Russia!  They  are 


322         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

talking  eagerly  now  of  the  return  to  Odessa,  and 
of  what  they  will  see  and  do  on  the  way.  While 
we — do  we  really  want  to  return  to  Russia?  Do 
we  want  to  see  again  the  spires  and  domes,  the 
Neva  front  of  the  palace,  and  the  Nevsky?  In 
all  truth,  no.  Both  Vladimir  and  I,  without 
acknowledging  it  to  each  other,  seem  to  be  drifting 
away  from  all  love  for  or  loyalty  to  Holy  Russia. 
Each  month  here  has  loosened  the  tie,  laid  bare, 
at  all  this  long  distance,  the  traits  in  Russian 
character,  the  features  of  Russian  life,  the  prin- 
ciples— or  want  of  principle — and  things  that  are 
most  antipathetic  to  us  in  Russia's  corrupt,  medi- 
aeval government — things  which  everything  in  us 
resents  and  revolts  against. 

Now,  less  than  in  the  happy  years  just  gone  by, 
could  we  consent  to  live  in  Russia,  or  Vladimir  to 
wear  the  uniform  of  office,  to  uphold  and  defend 
the  Czar  and  his  government.  Already,  I  long  for 
the  quiet  comfort  of  my  little  place  in  Devon,  the 
pleasant  social  order  of  English  life,  and  all  that 
such  a  stay  means  to  us  after  this  year  of  sorrow 
and  humiliation.  I  should  be  rejoiced  were  Vladi- 
mir a  British  subject;  our  lives  and  future  secure; 
Russia  a  dark  and  unhappy  past. 


CHAPTER  XXXIX 
TWO  FUTURES 

Saturday,  June  3rd. 

'  I  ''HE  Consul  gave  us  the  luncheon  hour  yes- 
•*•  terday,  and  he  brought  us  the  news  of  the 
strange  marriage  in  Kioto,  at  which  he  and  the 
English  Consul  were  present.  The  consignment 
of  horios  reached  Kioto  one  day,  the  preliminaries 
were  arranged  the  next ;  and  on  the  third  after- 
noon, Lyov,  a  Japanese  officer,  and  a  Russian 
general  went  to  the  Russian  church,  met  the  Con- 
tessa's  party  there,  and  Japanese  priests  per- 
formed the  ceremony.  The  Contessa  had  brought 
her  poor  uncle  to  tolerating  the  idea,  and  Madame 

H ,  after  oceans  of  tears  and  upbraiding,  had 

made  the  best  of  it.  The  American  Excellency  had 
come  down  out  of  pure  good  nature,  but  was 
haled  back  to  Tokyo  the  night  before.  He  wanted 
to  see  what  sort  of  a  rara  avis,  what  unusual  speci- 
men of  a  horio,  it  could  be,  to  induce  a  rich,  young, 
and  beautiful  woman, — of  title  and  good  family, 
with  no  encumbrances,  with  everything  in  the 
worldly  sense  to  gain  by  remaining  single  or  wait- 
323 


324         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

ing,  —  to  hasten  to  marry  a  prisoner  of  war,  a 
subject  of  a  defeated,  discredited  empire,  officer 
of  a  beaten  army. 

The  French  Consul,  acting  as  the  Russian  Con- 
sul, took  over  "Mira  Foresta,  a  British  subject; 
widow;  aged  twenty  -five  years;  religion,  Greek 
Orthodox,"  as  a  Russian  subject.  He  said  the 
solemnity  of  all,  including  Lyov  and  Mira,  made 
it  more  like  a  funeral  than  a  wedding. 

For  them,  all  is  rose  colour,  naturally  ;  and  they 
are  full  of  bright  plans  for  the  future,  which  the 
speedy  conclusion  of  the  war  makes  possible.  They 
can  happily  forget  everything  at  this  moment. 
We,  and  the  others,  cannot. 


Sunday,  June  4th. 

It  is  touching  to  see  the  sorrow  in  every  face 
we  know  so  well,  and  to  recognise  how  every  hope 
and  dream  has  fallen  since  Rojestvensky's  defeat, 
and  Nebogatoff's  surrender.  Of  all  the  Kamramh 
harbour  full  of  vessels  that  was  so  nearly  France'-s 
undoing,  a  few  refugee  ships  at  Manila,  a  stray 
torpedo  boat  at  Shanghai,  are  all  that  fly  the 
Russian  flag.  The  rest  are  at  the  bottom  of  the 
sea,  or  handed  over  to  the  Japanese  by  cowardly 
officers  who  feared  their  own  crews  more  than  the 
enemy;  who  obeyed  the  Japanese  signals  more 
willingly  than  they  obeyed  their  own  admirals. 


TWO  FUTURES  325 

Better  that  Russia  had  never  attempted  to  be  a 
naval  power,  than  to  end  in  such  a  fiasco. 

Sandy  is  of  course  in  a  ferment  of  excitement 
since  the  hopes  others  had  based  on  the  arrival  of 
the  Baltic  fleet  are  now  so  completely  dashed. 
He  foresees  a  speedy  peace  and  his  own  escape  to 
the  land  of  liberty  across  the  Pacific.  Many  are 
counting  as  surely  as  he  on  shaking  free  from 
their  allegiance  to  Russia,  and  the  current  of  our 
monotonous  life  here  has  been  strongly  stirred. 
Every  one  has  plans,  and  many  have  such  fore- 
bodings and  anxieties  as  it  touches  me  to  see. 

All  the  news  from  Russia  tells  of  discontent, 
uprisings  among  workmen  in  the  cities  and  peas- 
ants in  the  country.  The  Great  Awakening  is 
surely  at  hand,  the  Revolution,  the  Debacle.  Paul 
Lessar's  death,  which  occurred  a  few  days  before 
Rojestvensky's  terrible  fiasco,  was  another  blow 
to  Vladimir,  although  we  have  really  been  so  long 
expecting  it.  We  are  thankful  that  he  was  spared 
this  last  ignominy.  Poor  Paul !  Even  had  your 
life  lasted  a  little  longer,  the  guns  of  Togo's  vic- 
tory would  have  closed  it. 

Tragedy  would  seem  to  be  heaped  on  tragedy, 
if  there  were  not  touches  of  comedy  in  even  the 
Rojestvensky  promenade  towards  disaster.  In 
one  breath,  these  surrendered  officers  from  the 
Baltic  fleet  tell  of  the  insubordination,  the  incipient 
mutiny  that  reigned  on  every  ship.  How  Nebo- 


326         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

gatoff's  captains  had  no  sooner  gone  to  his  flag- 
ship to  arrange  for  surrender  than  the  officers  left 
behind  looted  the  ships'  safes  and  threw  overboard 
the  moneys  they  could  not  carry.  They  admit,  too, 
that  they  did  throw  the  wounded  overboard, 
because  they  were  cumbering  the  decks,  making 
it  slippery,  and  unnerving  the  gunners  with  their 
screams  and  groans.  They  naively  lament  that 
the  hospital  ship  having  been  apprehended  in 
carrying  troops,  despatches,  and  ammunition,  was 
seized  by  Togo,  and  brought  in  with  the  other 
prizes.  Then  the  youngest  and  best-looking  sister 
of  charity  asked  to  be  allowed  to  go  to  the  Sasebo 
naval  hospital  and  nurse  her  "uncle."  This  inci- 
dent is  detailed  in  the  Japanese  and  in  our  Kobe 
newspapers  in  all  sincerity,  and  if  it  has  been 
cabled  to  Petersburg,  one  can  fancy  the  roars 
of  laughter  at  the  naval  club  and  in  all  the  salons. 
And  how  the  treaty-port  papers  jeer  at  the  whole 
promenade  of  this  "Mr.  R.  J.  Ventsky"  from  Libau 
to  Sasebo! 

Although  confined  to  their  ships'  decks  ever 
since  October,  when  they  left  Russia,  these  new 
horios  complain  most  loudly  about  the  restrictions 
of  their  places  of  detention,  and  of  their  inability 
to  roam  the  streets  at  all  hours.  It  grates  upon 
them  most  of  all,  that  their  outdoor  day  should 
end  at  six  o'clock,  and  the  long,  long  evenings  are 
their  distraction.  Cards  and  hard  drinking  fill  the 


TWO  FUTURES  327 

hours  as  best  they  can ;  a  very  few  study  and 
occupy  themselves  in  rational  ways ;  but  the  most 
of  them,  knowing  little  of  shore  life  save  the  rou- 
tine of  club  and  admiralty  yards,  are  at  their 

wits'  end. 

-^>       *o        ^y       -v> 

Tuesday,  June  6th. 

"The  game  is  up,  the  cards  are  shown,  and 
Russia's  boasts  prove  mere  bluff,"  says  Sandy 
scornfully.  "Hereafter,  I  should  blush  to  call 
myself  a  Russian.  I  am  not — I  ceased  to  be,  when 
Sipiaguin  unjustly  threw  me  and  my  classmates 
into  a  criminal's  prison,  and  then  exiled  us  to  the 
Trans-Baikal.  Fortunately,  that  in  the  end  was 
the  means  of  getting  me  here,  where  I  can  fully 
measure  to  the  fraction  Russia's  right  to  be  called 
a  Christian  and  civilised  nation.  When  I  get  to 
America,  it  will  be  more  apparent  still.  I  am 
thankful  my  name  is  German ;  although  of  course 
in  a  republic  I  shall  have  to  drop  the  von  and  be 
known  as  Citizen  Rathroff .  Ah !  that  will  be  good 
to  vote,  to  elect  a  ruler,  to  help  govern !  even  if  I 
must  be  waiter  at  a  cafe,  or  drive  a  tramcar,  or 
carry  bags  at  a  railway  station  to  earn  a  living. 
And  then,  you  know,  there  are  such  wonderful 
chances  over  there.  If  some  Mademoiselle  Dollars 
does  not  admire  my  pretty  eyes — I  am  not  bad- 
looking,  as  you  know — I  may  achieve  millions  by 
myself  and  go  back  to  Petersburg  to  dazzle  the 


328         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

Nevsky  in  the  guise  of  an  American  billionaire. 
Even  come  as  Ambassador!  even  have  the  chance 
to  spit  upon  Von  Plehves  and  Sipiaguins  as  I  go 
by.  Ah !  those  are  my  castles  in  America ! 

"Ah,  America,  my  new  country — of  thee  I 
sing!"  he  exclaimed,  trolling  the  air  of  "God  save 
the  Queen"  in  his  joy.  "I  am  cultivating  these 
American  popes  now  most  assiduously.  I  am  ask- 
ing how  to  travel  there,  where  they  live,  how  they 
live,  how  much  it  costs  to  live  there — how  much 
clothes  cost,  and  beef  and  bread.  I  don't  dare  say 
a  syllable  about  tobacco  and  spirits.  It  would 
shock  them,  and  lose  me  all  my  fountains  of  in- 
formation. Ah,  Matushka,  you  do  not  know  how 
many  others  in  this  very  Matsuyama  are  planning 
and  dreaming,  as  I  am  planning  and  dreaming! 
I  know,  by  all  the  signs  which  I  think  I  am  con- 
cealing myself.  We  all  know  better  than  to  speak 
aloud.  We  shall  meet,  nevertheless,  a  very  con- 
siderable number  over  there,  when  the  peace  has 
been  made. 

"Ah!  will  the  day  soon  come?  Never  too  soon 
to  me.  In  how  many  months  will  it  be  that  I 
stand  in  Washington's  country,  and  become  a  citi- 
zen— a  fellow-citizen — of  the  great  Roosevelt? 
Oh,  if  our  Nicholas  had  been  a  strong  fighting  man 
like  that ! 

"Truly  William  of  Hohenzollern  is  right  when 
he  says  the  Japanese  are  the  scourge  of  God,  like 


TWO  FUTURES  329 

Attila  and  Napoleon,  and  that  the  Russians  lost 
because  they  were  enervated  by  alcoholism  and 
immorality.  Oh!  you  should  hear  the  loyalists  at 
my  lodgings  discuss  those  speeches  of  the  Kaiser  at 
Wilhelmshaven  and  Strasburg!  They  do  not  so 
much  mind  his  fling  at  Russian  Christianity  and 
its  deplorable  state — that  truth  does  not  cut  them 
like  his  comments  on  the  military.  After  advising 
Nicholas  how  to  run  the  war,  he  takes  to  criticis- 
ing us.  Perfidious !  Like  his  truckling  to  the 
Japanese  after  the  truth  about  Port  Arthur  was 
known,  and  declaring  that  he  only  wanted  peace 
and  his  own  home  empire.  To  prove  that,  he  walks 
into  this  Morocco  affair,  and  is  within  one  hair- 
line of  war  with  France.  A  bas  with  the  univer- 
sal genius!" 


CHAPTER  XL 
"PEACE!  PEACE!" 

Thursday,  June  8th. 

SURPRISE  treads  upon  surprise — Sandy's 
hero,  the  American  Roosevelt,  has  intervened 
and  asked  both  Russia  and  Japan  to  name  com- 
missioners' and  see  if  they  cannot  agree  to  make 
peace ! 

In  my  first  gasp  of  astonishment,  as  the  cook 
burst  excitedly  into  our  presence,  with  the  little 
pink  gogal,  crying,  "Peace !  Peace !  The  Ameri- 
can Emperor  says:  'Stop  fighting!  Stop  fight- 
ing !' " — in  the  first  moment  of  shock,  I  could 
hardly  stand  upon  my  feet.  Good  news  is  so 
unusual  to  us,  anything  pleasant  coming  by 
gogal  has  hitherto  been  so  unknown,  that  I  quite 
lost  my  head  for  the  moment. 

Vladimir  lay  sleeping,  dozing  in  the  warm  soft 
afternoon  air  of  the  June  day,  but  the  fanfare  of 
the  gogai  bells  in  the  street  soon  roused  him. 
"Vladimir!  Vladimir!  The  Peace!  The  Peace! 
It  has  come.  God  has  given  it  to  us  at  last." — 
And  I  burst  into  uncontrollable  sobs. 

Vladimir,  dazed,  rose  slowly  to  a  sitting  posture, 
330 


"PEACE!  PEACE!"  331 

and  tried  to  stand,  but  he  tottered  on  his  weak 
knees  and  sank  to  the  long  chair  again  and  buried 
his  face  in  his  hands.  In  silence,  we  sat  and 
listened  to  the  chime  of  gogai  bells,  as  the  news- 
boys ran  about  the  town,  and  the  sounds  echoed 
down  the  long  stretch  of  the  moat  and  against  the 
chateau's  hillside.  We  must  have  sat  in  this  way 
for  fully  ten  minutes,  when  the  house-boy  slid  the 
door  panel,  said:  "Kato  san!"  and  sat  back  on 
his  heels  with  radiant  countenance,  as  Tosaburo 
clattered  in  with  all  his  accoutrements — no  time 
to  lay  aside  his  sword  belt  at  the  door. 

"Oh !  Oh !  I  have  come !  I  have  come  as  fast 
as  I  could,  to  be  the  first  to  make  you  the  present 
of  good  news,  but  I  see  that  gogai  bell  has  told 
you  all.  Now  it  will  be  peace,  and  we  shall  be  best 
friends." 

With  joyful  faces,  we  sat  and  talked  it  over  and 
over;  how  it  would  be  done;  where  the  conference 
would  meet;  who  would  be  the  commissioners  to 
negotiate ;  and  how  soon  we  should  get  away  from 
the  little  lyo  city,  where,  really,  now  that  it  draws 
near  an  end,  our  stay — has — been — a — happy — 
one! 

Thoughtful  Anna  slid  the  door  and  entered  with 
a  tray,  and  the  house-boy  held  the  sparkling  bottle 
of  cheer  swathed  in  the  white  robes  of  peace. 

"A  flag  of  truce !  A  flag  of  truce !"  said  Vladi- 
mir, pointing  to  it,  and  Tosaburo  burst  into 


332         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

chuckles  of  joy  at  the  joke.  We  clicked  glasses 
and  drank  to  the  white  angel  of  peace  per  se,  and 
to  the  American  Roosevelt,  who  has  forced  the 
situation  upon  both  combatants.  We  drank  to  the 
last  dancing  bubble,  and  then  Vladimir  whirled  his 
glass  overhead,  with  the  fire  and  gaiety  of  youth, 
and  tossed  it  out  on  the  garden  stones — I  threw 
mine  also,  and  frantically  embraced  him  in  the 
presence  of  Tosaburo. 

The  gardener  heard  the  crash  and  stole  to  a 
gap  in  the  shining  green  hedge;  the  cook  peeped 
forth  from  another  green  frame ;  and  the  boy  and 
amah  peered  across  from  the  dining-room  door. 

"Come !  Come !"  cried  Vladimir,  motioning  to 
the  staff.  "All  must  drink  a  Banzai  in  champagne- 
sake  with  me,  and  celebrate  the  end  of  war."  And 
in  proper  form,  they  ranged  themselves,  accepted 
the  glasses  from  Anna  with  easy  grace  and  pro- 
found bows,  and  let  her  pour  them  frothing  to  the 
brim.  Vladimir  made  the  toasts,  to  "Peace,"  to 
"the  Emperor  in  Tokyo,"  and  to  "Roosevelt  in 
America,"  and  then  led  the  Banzals.  The  gar- 
dener, as  elder  of  the  company,  responded  for 
them  with  graceful  thanks.  They  bowed  pro- 
foundly and  shuffled  away,  chuckling  and  cheerful. 


"PEACE!  PEACE!"  333 

Sunday,  July  16th. 

Days  and  weeks  have  passed,  and  the  Japanese 
Peace  Envoys  are  only  departing  to  meet  Sergius 
de  Witte !  in  Washington ! 

Blank  astonishment  has  overwhelmed  every  Rus- 
sian, when,  after  several  names,  De  Witte's  was 
announced.  "I  would  rather  die  here,  rather  stay 
here  years,  than  make  inglorious  peace  now," 
sobbed  Captain  M .  "And  to  gain  my  free- 
dom through  Sergius  de  Witte!  Oh!  this  is 
hard!" 

The  Angel  of  Peace  could  only  be  believed  as 
posing  to  the  world's  admiration  for  a  deceitful 
moment,  and  wore  sinister  mien  in  the  garb  of 
Sergius  de  Witte.  None  trusted  her — him — the 
high-handed  genii,  whose  railroad  and  industrial 
policies  were  to  recreate  Russia,  but  instead, 
have  ruined  her.  First  the  Trans-Siberian 
railway;  and  then  a  war  to  hold  and  keep  the 
railway. 

"I  should  not  be  here  but  for  Serge  de  Witte," 
growled  one.  "I  mortgaged  my  last  estate  to  a 
Jew,  and  put  it  in  his  cursed  industrial  shares. 
They  paid  me  forty  per  cent,  and  then  fifty  per 
cent,  and  then — since  1901,  nothing!  Before  I 
could  redeem  my  lands  I  was  penniless.  I  rode 
back  from  Paris  in  third-class  cars  by  night.  I 
applied  for  service  on  the  frontier.  They  gave  me 
a  Siberian  regiment  of  railway  guards  at  Harbin. 


334         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

We  were  moved  to  Port  Arthur,  and  there  my 
career  ended.  I  have  very  truly  served  twelve 
years  in  one.  And  now,  I  must  owe  my  freedom  to 
Serge  de  Witte  !  A  curse  on  him  !  What  has 
Nicholas  Alexandrovitch  come  to,  that  he  chooses 
him?  A  post  worthy  of  our  ablest  diplomat,  for 
the  cleverest,  wiliest  ambassador,  and  he  gives  it 
to  the  Station  Master.  Ah!  It  is  a  loan,  not  a 
treaty,  that  he  seeks." 


Thursday,  July  20th. 

Poor  Nebogatoff  and  his  men  are  in  the  saddest 
plight  of  all,  every  one  now  turning  cool  glances 
and  sneers  towards  them,  because  of  Nicholas'  dis- 
pleasure. They  are  prisoners  and  they  are  not 
prisoners.  Having  surrendered,  they  were  offered 
the  same  privileges  as  the  Port  Arthur  officers, 
and  Nebogatoff  cabled,  asking  authority  for  those 
who  wished  to  do  so  to  go  on  parole.  The 
sovereign  ignored  the  message,  and  it  was  repeated. 
Then  the  French  Ambassador  at  Petersburg  was 
cabled  to  present  the  case,  and  for  answer,  Nebo- 
gatoff and  all  his  officers  were  stricken  from  the 
rolls  of  the  Imperial  Navy  !  deprived  of  their  com- 
missions, degraded,  disgraced  without  regular  form 
of  court-martial.  Their  dismay,  their  sorrow,  and 
their  chagrin  are  pitiful  to  witness.  As  they  can- 


"PEACE!  PEACE!"  335 

not  any  longer  be  considered  prisoners,  they  are 
men  without  a  country,  without  an  occupation 
even,  since  Vladimir  says  the  average  of  them  could 
never  get  employment  in  any  mercantile  marine, 
hardly  on  Volga  barge  service. 

It  is  a  sad  situation,  a  dilemma  none  could  ever 
have  foreseen  when  Nebogatoff's  council  of  officers 
voted  that  resistance  was  hopeless  and  the  sur- 
render of  two  thousand  useful  lives  better  than 
giving  them  to  be  battered  by  Japanese  shells  and 
drowned  among  the  rocks  of  the  Korean  coast. 
They  have  not  done  anything  nearly  as  iniquitous 
and  cowardly  as  Stoessel  in  his  surrender,  yet  he 
gets  a  sword,  and  Nicholas,  pitiless  in  the  bitter- 
ness of  his  chagrin,  visits  his  wrath  upon  these  poor 
naval  men. 

-V>  -Q>  <^x  <^x 

Sunday,  July  23rd. 

One  of  the  American  popes  has  been  to  Kioto, 
and  seen  the  Siemenoffs  at  their  Fushimi  villa. 
"A  honeymoon  in  captivity  !"  he  exclaimed.  "Why, 
Captain  Siemenoff  can  stand  captivity  forever. 
He  loves  his  prison — and  his  fellow-prisoner ! 
They  are  the  most  ideal  pair  of  lovers  the  sun  ever 
saw.  They  have  a  beautiful  Japanese  house  on  a 
hill,  with  fine  old  screens  and  fusuma,  and  a  gar- 
den that  is  a  copy  of  the  Sambo-in  garden;  and 
the  house  is  already  a  godown.  It  is  fairly 
crowded  with  the  curios  Mrs.  Siemenoff  has 


336         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

bought.  She  is  a  good  customer  of  the  Kioto 
dealers,  and  will  soon  be  a  dangerous  rival  for 
you,  Mrs.  von  Theill.  You  must  be  glad  that  she 
chose  another  field,  for  you  could  not  both  have 
gleaned  here. 

"Captain  Siemenoff  says  the  military  and  police 
need  not  trouble  to  watch  him.  The  art  shops  of 
Kioto  do  that,  day  and  night.  'I  slide  the  shoji,' 
he  says,  'in  the  morning,  and  there  waits  a  Japa- 
nese Smile  and  something  tied  up  in  a  blue  cotton 
cloth.  "I  am  of  Ikeda,"  says  the  smile,  and  pro- 
duces things  that  send  my  wife  into  ecstasies,  and 
she  buys  them  all  before  breakfast.  He  goes,  and 
another  bundle  and  smile  come  to  the  front  of  our 
garden  stage.  "I  am  of  Hayashi,"  says  the  smile ; 
and  his  end  is  like  the  first.  A  third  smiles  loudly, 
and  says:  "I  am  of  Yamanaka,"  and  he  discloses 
more  Japonaiseries  and  Chinoiseries,  and  Madame 
gives  another  chit.  "I  am  Kita,"  "I  am  Shimizu," 
"I  am  Fukuda,"  say  other  smiles  all  day  long. 
Then  there  are  ancient  men  of  Fushimi,  with  voices 
like  foghorns  and  manners  like  velvet,  and  a  man 
of  a  million  wrinkles  from  Nara.  He  must  have 
sat  for  the  picture  of  old  Longevity.  When 
Madame  makes  moues  at  his  prices,  he  creases  a 
few  more  wrinkles  into  his  visage,  and  her  soft 
heart  relents.  They  all  cheat  us  and  overcharge 
us;  but  we  like  it.  We  enjoy  life  so  much  that 
that  is  even  part  of  the  enjoyment. 


"PEACE!  PEACE!"  337 

"  'What  do  we  collect  ?  Oh !  everything,  every- 
thing; from  screens  and  bronze  goldfish  bowls  to 
netsukes  and  dolls,  toys  in  gold  lacquer ;  everything 
— porcelain,  pottery,  tea  jars,  tea  bowls,  paint- 
ings, prints,  pewter,  brass,  wood,  leather,  sword 
guards,  brocades,  embroideries,  dolls,  fans,  rosa- 
ries— All,  all!  Being  human,  everything  human 
interests  us.  We  have  spent  days  at  the  potter's, 
turned  the  wheel,  shaped  the  bowl,  glazed,  fired, 
and  acquired  it.  We  have  lived  beside  the  lacquer 
artists,  magnifying  glass  in  hand.  We  have  had 
painters  by  the  score  hold  day-long  seances  on 
our  mats,  and  give  demonstrations  and  art  tourna- 
ments for  us.  We  have  had  jugglers,  dancers, 
fencers,  jiu  jitsu  experts,  wrestlers,  and  archers 
to  delight  us  in  our  own  compound.  The  high 
priests  at  the  temples  are  our  dearest  friends. 
They  condescend  to  take  ceremonial  tea  with  us; 
and  show  us  all  the  inner  treasures.  The  police- 
men at  the  Art  Museum  run  to  tell  us  and  show  us 
when  an  exhibit  is  changed,  and  all  the  children 
and  toy  venders  at  Inari  are  our  special  cronies.' 

"I  assure  you,  Mrs.  von  Theill,  those  two  young 
people  are  so  absurdly  and  completely  happy  at 
Fushirni  that  I  doubt  if  they  pay  any  heed  to 
the  course  of  events.  I  was  with  them  for  two 
hours,  and  we  did  not  once  discuss  the  peace  con- 
ference. Out  of  the  evil  of  this  war  has  come  good 
for  them." 


CHAPTER  XLI 

AFTER  THE  WAR 

Sunday,  August  6th. 

TF  war  is  a  fearfully  slow  business,  so  is  peace. 
-*•  There  was  interminable  delay  before  Nicholas 
would  agree  to  negotiate  —  interminable  delay 
while  he  played  with  Mouravieff  and  Ignatieff,  and 
finally  chose  De  Witte  —  and  interminable  delay 
before  they  finally  left  Petersburg.  So  has  passed 
all  of  June  and  now  July,  and  the  plenipotentiaries 
meet  face  to  face.  We  have  drifted  along,  living 
with  slack  interest  from  day  to  day  ;  depressed 
and  stupefied  almost  by  two  months  of  saturating 
rain  and  dampness.  Typhoons  and  the  edges  of 
typhoons  have  smothered  and  drenched  us,  and 
already  there  is  concern  for  the  rice  crop.  It 
started  badly  this  year,  and  I  can  see  that  the 
green  belt  of  rice  fields  around  the  city  is  not  as 
luxuriant  as  it  was  last  summer.  A  few  weeks  of 
dry,  hot  weather  now  in  the  doyo  can  save  it,  they 
say. 


Sunday,  August  20th. 


Sunday,  August  20th. 

I  let  my  journal  lag,  during  the  suspense  and 
delay   until   the   peace-makers    reached   America. 
338 


AFTER  THE  WAR  339 

And  then  followed  day  after  day  of  nothingness — 
nothingness  in  the  cable  reports  our  Kobe  paper 
printed.  I  almost  wondered  if  Vladimir  were  dis- 
sembling, he  seemed  so  indifferent  to  the  day's  news 
that  he  had  always  so  earnestly  discussed.  Inci- 
dents went  by  without  ruffling  or  depressing  him. 
Nothing  stirred  his  apathy.  Saghalien  was  taken 
and  overrun  by  Japanese  troops,  the  garrisons 
offering  as  little  resistance  as  the  Baltic  fleet ;  and 
whole  garrisons  were  brought  over  to  swell  the 
total  of  the  Russian  army  in  Japan.  "I  shall 
never  discuss  peace  until  a  Russian  army  is  landed 
in  Japan,"  said  our  most  boastful  and  incompetent 
general — and  the  army  is  truly  here — seventy 
thousand  strong. 

The  Black  Sea  fleet,  which  proved  as  worthless 
and  undisciplined  from  admiral  down  to  coal- 
heaver  as  Von  Woerffel  had  said  it  was,  has  mu- 
tinied and  held  Odessa  in  a  state  of  siege  for  a 
week,  and  the  Sevastopol  admiral  did  not  dare 
descend  upon  the  Kniaz  Potemkin  lest  his  battle- 
ship crew  mutiny  also,  toss  him  overboard  or  shoot 
him.  The  whole  mutiny  on  the  Potemkin  was  so  like 
opera  bouffe,  that  Sandy  RathrofF  laughed,  and 
Vladimir  and  I  had  to  laugh  too,  as  if  it  were  the 
fleet  and  mutiny  of  another  country.  And  Tosa- 
buro,  our  own  courteous  Tosaburo,  when  appealed 
to,  read  and  roughly  translated  the  screaming 
farce  from  the  Mainichi. 


340         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

"Oh,  translate  that  again,  please,"  begged 
Sandy,  "that  about  the  ladies  with  the  red  para- 
sols promenading  on  the  quarter-deck  with  the 
Corsair  chiefs.  Oh  !  Delicious  !  Delicious  !  There 
must  be  a  comic  opera  of  that  incident.  And  then, 
they  fled  to  a  Roumanian  port  and  surrendered 
when  they  had  eaten  up  all  the  provisions.  How 
characteristically  Russian  !  An  army  travels  on 
its  stomach  —  and  so  do  Revolution  and  Reform  ! 
Oh!  Svoboda!  Svoboda!  [Liberty!  Liberty!]  what 
jokes  are  perpetrated  in  thy  name!" 


Sunday,  September  3rd. 

Early  this  gloomy,  suffocating,  grey  Sunday 
morning,  we  rode  to  the  Dogo  side  of  the  chateau 
hill  to  the  garden  of  a  banker,  who  had  some  won- 
derful asagaos  in  bloom.  This  is  the  second  season 
now  that  I  have  seen  the  great  cloches  de  matin  open 
their  enchanted  corollas  in  Japan  !  Our  own  gar- 
dener has  grown  us  some  beauties  this  season,  has 
ravaged  lyo,  and  sent  to  Kiushiu  and  Nagoya  for 
precious  seeds.  At  Dairinji  they  have  a  flower 
show  of  their  own,  and  by  carrying  the  pots  into 
a  dark  room,  they  keep  them  to  enjoy  until  quite 
late  in  the  day. 

Our  banker  had  put  mat-awnings  over  and 
around  his  shelves  of  flower  pots,  so  that  even  at  nine 
o'clock  his  single  cloches  were  only  a  little  limp. 


AFTER  THE  WAR  341 

We  sat  admiring  when  Tosaburo  joined  us.  "What 
news  of  the  peace  ?"  we  eagerly  asked,  and  our  host 
made  a  gesture  and  lifted  his  eyebrows  in  despair, 
at  the  reply  of  no  further  progress.  The  deadlock, 
as  it  seems  to  be,  has  lasted  these  three  days,  and 
the  suspense  is  as  great  as  for  the  conclusion  of 
any  battle.  De  Witte  will  not  yield  territory  nor 
pay  indemnity,  although  he  at  first  conceded  every 
other  point  the  Japanese  demanded,  with  such 
alacrity  that  it  was  apparent  that  he  knew  the 
negotiations  would  fail  in  the  end,  and  that  these 
surrenders  would  not  be  held  against  him.  Quite 
as  we  all  prophesied,  these  first  negotiations  are  to 
fall  through,  and  we  must  wait  and  drag  on  our 
lives,  while  more  defeats  bring  Nicholas  to  his 
senses,  and  a  second  conference  assembles.  Then 
more  parley  and  preparation,  and  nearly  a  year 
will  be  gone  before  we  can  leave  Japan.  My  hopes 
have  undergone  so  many  alternations  since  the  con- 
ference began,  that  I  am  dulled  and  indifferent. 
As  easy  to  go  as  to  stay ;  and  now,  in  this  wilting, 
typhoonish  weather,  after  the  incessant  rains  of 
the  long  hot  summer,  even  the  effort  of  thinking 
about  our  packing  and  plans  is  an  exertion,  and 
is  shirked. 

When  we  were  leaving  the  garden,  Tosaburo 
suggested  that  we  go  with  him  up  to  the  signal 
station  on  the  first  terrace  of  the  chateau  and  get 
a  breath  of  air.  Extra  coolies  pushed  our  kurumas 


342          AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

up  the  long  slope  to  the  first  high  terrace  over- 
looking the  city  and  the  far  sea.  The  air  was 
motionless,  stifling,  and  so  thick  and  heavy  with 
dampness  that  it  was  an  effort  to  draw  it  into  the 
lungs.  The  coolies  streamed  with  perspiration, 
and  glistened  as  if  their  golden-bronze  skins  were 
freshly  lacquered. 

The  banker  and  Tosaburo  talked  more  intently, 
as  they  looked  out  toward  the  sea — toward  an  in- 
definite, grey,  hazy  space  between  hazier  grey  hills 
where  we  knew  the  sea  must  be.  It  was  all  grey, 
colourless,  monotone  landscape — no  notan,  no  con- 
trast of  black  and  white,  of  distinct  light  and 
shade,  no  clear  silver  lights.  It  was  all  sodden, 
dull,  and  leaden-tinted;  a  bullet-coloured  land- 
scape, done  in  half -defined  washes  with  a  big,  wet 
brush. 

The  banker  looked  westward  and  to  the  south, 
and  shook  his  head  in  impatience.  He  asked  Tosa- 
buro if  any  weather  report  had  been  given  out 
since  the  first  one  of  the  morning,  and  both  went 
over  to  the  old  samurai,  who  was  rubbing  and 
petting  the  gun  with  which  he  announces  exact 
noonday  to  Matsuyama.  The  samurai  reached 
into  his  tiny  sentry-box  and  brought  out  a  paper ; 
the  two  visitors  leaned  in  and  regarded  the  barome- 
ter, and  all  three  talked  earnestly. 

"Another  typhoon  coming,  I  suppose,"  said 
Vladimir.  "I  must  say  I  am  weary  of  weather.  I 


AFTER  THE  WAR  343 

have  been  steamed  in  this  typhoon  atmosphere 
since  early  June,  and  three  months  of  rain  and  hot 
mist  has  softened  my  very  bones.  Ah !  for  the 
bracing  dry  wind  of  a  desert !  Hot,  hot,  and  dry 
— dry  as  the  sands  themselves.  One  week  of  Fer- 
ghana, and  I  should  be  a  giant  in  strength." 

"Is  the  typhoon  coming  this  way?"  I  asked 
Tosaburo. 

"Yes,  when  it  left  Formosa,  we  thought  it  would 
turn  in  to  the  China  coast,  like  the  other.  But  it 
is  coming  nearer  to  us  now,  and  will  be  at  Nagasaki 
this  afternoon.  We  shall  get  it  in  the  night,  I 
suppose.  Look  to  your  flower-pots  to-night, 
Asagao  san,"  he  said  to  the  banker,  who  was  the 
picture  of  gloom. 

"We  shall  have  the  peace  to-night  also,"  said 
Tosaburo,  with  a  fierce  smile,  as  if  bracing  himself 
to  some  disaster.  "Japan  will  sign  at  once.  We 
shall  yield  the  indemnity,  probably.  Our  rice 
crop  is  totally  ruined.  The  bankers  will  decide  the 
day.  Our  assets  are  millions  less  in  these  hours 
since  the  glass  began  falling,  and  it  will  not  be 
profitable  to  keep  on  fighting.  We  have  Sagha- 
lien  and  Manchuria ;  and  that  will  do."  His  face 
grew  rigid,  and  he  smiled  the  Japanese  smile. 

"Saio  de  gozarimasu"  said  the  banker  gravely, 
and  left  us. 

"And  the  barometer  decides  the  peace?"  asked 
Vladimir  wonderingly. 


344         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

"Yes,  the  barometer,  the  typhoon,  the  rice  crop, 
and  the  bankers  —  they  are  all  bound  together  in  the 
sum  of  our  national  prosperity  and  riches.  It  is 
decided.  You  will  have  your  Christmas  in  Eng- 
land. All  the  horios  will  go  home  before  the  chrys- 
anthemums bloom  ;  and  our  soldiers  will  come  back 
from  Manchuria  before  the  snow  flies  at  Mukden. 
I  shall  not  return  to  the  field  with  my  uncle,  as  his 
aide."  A  great  sigh,  a  setting  of  the  jaws,  and 
then  the  Japanese  smile,  the  courageous  smile  that 
hides  grief,  sorrow,  and  disappointment,  put  a 
mask  over  his  face. 


Sunday,  September  10th. 

A  chime  of  gogai  bells  rang  through  the  streets. 
"Peace  !  Peace  !"  the  people  cried  joyfully  again,  as 
they  sprang  upon  the  bits  of  pink  paper.  Very 
quietly,  without  comment,  they  went  back  to  their 
mats.  There  were  no  Banzais,  no  fireworks,  no 
flags,  no  lanterns,  no  rejoicings  of  any  kind. 
Although  not  official,  London  despatches  said  that 
the  pact  was  concluded  without  De  Witte  pay- 
ing a  sou  of  the  enormous  indemnity  he  was  trusted 
to  scale  down  !  And  half  of  Saghalien  awarded  to 
each  country!  The  London  news  stood  for  days 
without  denial.  Dismay  and  indignation  drove  the 
Japanese  to  sullen  speech  or  gloomy  silence;  and, 
strange  to  say,  at  Dairinji,  the  Kokaido,  Oguri, 


AFTER  THE  WAR  345 

and  in  the  hospital  wards,  the  Russian  officers 
denounced  the  peace  as  furiously  as  they  knew 
how,  and  denounced  De  Witte  more  violently  still. 
The  Cossacks,  the  riflemen,  the  Siberians,  and 
the  sailors  cheered,  as  they  did  for  Togo's  victory 
over  Rojestvensky  —  for  the  same  reason  —  that  it 
meant  the  end  of  the  war  and  their  speedy  return 
to  Russia  !  Vladimir  and  I  wait  quietly  without 
excitement,  for  we  know  that  we  are  soon  free  to 
go  —  to  Russia  ?  God  forbid  !  To  Russia  —  where 
a  terrible  era,  the  fearful  awakening  of  those  half- 
civilised  ignorant  peasants,  and  those  savage, 
brutalised  workmen,  must  now  come.  From  those 
horrors  we  shrink.  In  the  revolution  and  the  re- 
construction, we  cannot  take  part.  Vladimir  has 
served  his  country  well,  but  the  tie  is  almost  broken. 


Monday,  October  9th. 

Enviously  our  brother  horios  looked  upon  us, 
believing  that  Vladimir  and  I  would  leave  at  the 
earliest  moment,  by  grace  of  Tosaburo's  uncle. 
"No,  we  shall  probably  be  the  last  to  leave,"  said 
Vladimir.  "We  are  comfortable  here,  and  we 
shall  both  wait,  if  we  may,  to  see  the  sick  and 
wounded  safely  out  of  the  hospital." 

Every  one  else  is  impatient,  and  for  them  the 
days  seem  to  drag.  Poor  M  -  and  his  four 
companions,  who  have  been  in  prison  for  these 


346         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

months  because  of  their  repeated  attempts  to 
escape,  have  reappeared,  pale,  sad,  and  listless. 
Theirs  has  been  a  real  imprisonment,  thanks 
altogether  to  their  senseless  and  repeated  folly. 

The  Americans  have  sent  us  their  home  papers 
to  read — nothing  is  censored  or  forbidden  now — 
and  Vladimir  has  been  lost  in  their  hundreds  of 
pages. — He  reads  them  all,  for  such  peace-making 
never  was  before.  He  shudders  and  gasps,  beats 
the  air  and  beats  his  brow,  and  calls  me  to  listen 
to  this  and  to  that.  He  calls  all  the  Saints  to  wit- 
ness that  there  never  was  such  peace-making  be- 
fore.— Peace  of  the  new  diplomacy !  Peace  of  the 
Twentieth  Century !  Peace  as  she  is  made  in 
America !  Peace  as  she  is  hammered  out  at  the 
American  Cronstadt!  All  the  traditions  are 
broken  with.  Japan  and  Russia  have  not  made 
peace — nor  wanted  it.  Oh,  no!  That  terrible 
American  President,  II  Strenuoso,  he  has  made  it. 
He  wanted  it,  he  would  have  it.  And  I  believe  him 
capable  of  locking  the  conferees  in  a  room  and 
starving  them  into  obedience. 

No  gentle  peace  was  that  at  Portsmouth. 
Shades  of  Paul  Lessar !  Could  you  only  have  lived 
to  sit  with  Vladimir  and  read  this  astonishing  his- 
tory they  have  just  made  in  America !  What  a 
feeble  "Iron  Wrist"  is  yours,  compared  to  this 
chilled-steel  wrist  of  this  Roosevelt ! 

Vladimir  has  laughed.    He  has  thrown  back  his 


AFTER  THE  WAR  347 

head  and  roared,  as  if  it  were  a  burlesque  or  a 
comedy  he  were  enjoying,  and  not  the  fate  of 
nations  in  a  balance  lightly  poised — poised  until 
the  terrible  Roosevelt  hit  the  scales  with  his  steel 
wrist  and  left  Serge  de  Witte  dumf ounded  with  the 
clumsy  muddle  he  had  made  of  it  in  the  beginning. 

But  who  could  have  dreamed  of  such  a  turn  in 
the  orderly  course  of  negotiations,  as  this  irruption 
of  the  American  President!  Fancy  such  an  inci- 
dent in  Europe!  Hardly  Napoleon  ever  equalled 
it  in  high-handedness !  And  we  can  none  of  us  do 
anything  nor  repudiate  it !  Oh,  it  is  the  strangest 
thing  in  all  the  world!  Never  more  will  a  peace 
conference  go  to  America.  The  Americans  are  too 
literal.  A  peace  conference  is  for  the  purpose  of 
making  peace,  they  argue — therefore,  Make 
peace !  Quick !  At  once !  Immediately  !  Oh ! 
sooner  than  that,  even;  if  the  Roosevelt  happens 
to  be  ruling. 

In  our  heart  of  hearts  not  one  of  us,  not  a 
Russian  nor  a  Japanese,  believed  that  peace  would 
result  from  this  conference,  nor  did  we  want  it  just 
yet,  while  realising  the  need  of  it.  Both  armies 
in  the  field  protested.  Both  Emperors  yielded  to 
Roosevelt's  first  request,  for  appearance's  sake 
only — as  a  matter  of  etiquette,  to  maintain  les 
convenances,  and  pose  properly  to  the  world — to 
save  face.  It  was  such  a  well-managed  farce,  we 
thought,  that  diplomatic  promenade  from  two  ends 


348         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

of  the  earth  to  the  American  Cronstadt.  It  must 
have  been  hard  to  keep  straight  faces  when  they 
all  entered  the  council  room. 

Serge  de  Witte  yielded  everything,  knowing 
they  would  soon  reach  the  impasse  and  retire — and 
William  of  Hohenzollern  had  confused  the  situa- 
tion hopelessly  by  his  melodramatic  meddling  and 
— but  the  unexpected  happened.  To  the  amaze- 
ment of  all  the  world,  to  the  horror  of  all  of  the  old 
school  of  diplomacy,  that  terrible  M.  Roosevelt 
would  have  none  of  their  non  possumus.  He  tele- 
graphed, he  sent  messengers  and  notes;  he  haled 
them  from  their  beds  at  midnight  by  that  last 
invention  of  the  devil,  the  telephone.  Could  the 
wires  have  permitted,  he  would  have  helloed  in  the 
ears  of  both  Emperors — by  their  baptismal  names 
— tutoyed  them  orally,  as  he  even  did  by  cable; 
arguing,  harping  on,  and  repeating  his  wish  for 
peace,  oblivious  to  denials  and  rebuffs. 

Oh !  it  has  been  dumfounding.  Never  was  Son 
of  Heaven  nor  our  Anointed  Autocrat  bullied  and 
coerced  by  any  outsider  like  that.  Nor  would  any 
living  person  have  dared  to  do  it  save  this  plain 
Twentieth  Century  Citizen  Roosevelt !  Oh !  Wil- 
liam of  Hohenzollern,  where  are  you  now?  A 
greater  one  has  risen  up! 

Well,  this  "Steel  Wrist"  Roosevelt  fought  for 
peace  as  knights  jousted  of  old.  He  struggled 
for  peace,  as  if  it  were  a  football  on  the  field.  He 


349 

argued  for  peace  like  Maitre  Labori  for  Dreyfus. 
And  he  won,  to  the  amazement  of  the  world. 
"Another  day's  delay,"  says  Vladimir,  "and  I 
believe  that  American  President  capable  of  burst- 
ing into  the  council  room,  knocking  their  heads 
together,  and  holding  them  by  their  throats  until 
they  signed  a  treaty  of  peace." 

And  now,  to  save  us,  we  cannot  see  which  side  he 
has  favoured  —  both  claim  his  favouritism,  both  re- 
pudiate and  revile  him.  It  is  all  beyond  us.  We 
wait  to  meet  the  diplomatic  world  in  Europe,  and 
learn  the  truth,  the  inside  springs  which  are  known 
only  to  those  of  la  carriere. 


Sunday,  October  22nd. 

The  Russian  hospital  ship  Mongolia  will  arrive 
next  week  at  Takahama,  and  I  shall  be  so  glad  to 
be  useful  in  helping  to  get  my  poor  patients  away. 
They  will  be  taken  over  to  Vladivostok  first,  and 
then  by  Red  Cross  trains  to  Russia. 

We  have  had  amusing  times  with  the  social 
amenities.  Vladimir  and  I  have  been  on  good 
terms  with  all  the  authorities,  and  as  soon  as 
the  actual  peace  gave  us  an  excuse,  we  had 
a  round  of  dinners  for  the  Japanese  officials 
and  residents,  and  the  foreign  residents  who  have 
been  so  uniformly  kind  to  me  for  all  the  past 
year.  Then  the  conscience-stricken  comman- 


350         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

dant  wished  to  proclaim  his  cordial  intentions, 
and  invited  all  the  three  hundred  and  twenty 
Russian  officers  to  a  banquet  by  the  sea,  and — 
three  hundred  declined.  Donnerwetter!  but  there 
was  wrath  at  that.  Then  the  American  sister  of 
charity  gave  a  little  dinner,  and  the  higher  Rus- 
sians officers  went  and  sat  amicably  with  the  Japa- 
nese civil  and  military  officials  under  the  flag  of 
Roosevelt,  the  Peace  AngeL  Cheered  by  that,  the 
Japanese  General  took  a  hand,  and  invited  the 
higher  Russian  officers  to  dine.  Under  stress  of 
arguments  by  Vladimir,  Grievsky,  and  the  Ameri- 
can sister,  they  accepted ;  but  on  the  very  day  of 
the  dinner  some  thirty  fell  suddenly  and  grievously 
ill,  and  civilian  worthies  filled  their  places.  We 
were  incensed  beyond  words ;  for,  if  the  Japanese 
military  were  willing  to  part  amicably  and  to  strive 
for  good  feeling,  our  officers  should  have  responded. 

"He  took  away  the  sword  that  General  Nogi 
left  me,"  said  one.  "He  struck  me  with  his  sword 
when  I  was  unarmed,  at  his  mercy,"  said  another. 
"He  unjustly  punished  me  for  the  stupidities  of 
his  interpreter,"  said  another.  "But  we  like  the 
Matsuyama  townspeople,  who  have  been  uniformly 
kind,  courteous,  and  sympathetic  to  us ;  and  we 
want  to  express  it  to  them.  What  shall  we  do? 
What  can  we  do?" 

"Go  and  ask  the  American  sister,"  said  Vladimir. 
In  a  few  minutes  they  reappeared  to  tell  us  that 


AFTER  THE  WAR  351 

the  Red  Cross  ladies  were  having  a  bazaar  at  a 
tea  house  garden  at  Dogo  in  the  afternoon,  to  raise 
money  for  some  destitute  soldiers'  families,  and 
the  American  advised  them  to  go  there  and  spend. 

"It  is  precisely  our  chance,"  shouted  Esper, 
who  posted  off  with  extra  coolies  to  carry  the  word 
to  every  officers'  mess  to  go  to  Dogo,  and  spend, 
spend,  spend,  as  long  as  the  little  Japanese  ladies 
had  a  teacup  left. 

It  was  like  a  procession  out  the  Dogo  road  that 
day,  and  the  breloque  railway  carriages  were 
crowded.  The  garden  was  jammed,  and  the  little 
women  had  soon  no  time  to  bow  to  their  horio 
acquaintances,  so  rapidly  did  the  money  flow  in 
upon  them. 

"Five  thousand  yens !  Five  thousand  yens !" 
said  Madame  Takasu,  excited  beyond  all  her  Japa- 
nese powers  of  repression,  when  the  money  had  been 
counted.  "And  we  never  dreamed  that  we  should 
make  two  hundred  yens  even.  What  shall  we  do? 
What  shall  we  do?  It  is  so  wonderful.  And  all  the 
time  the  Shoko  sans  [officers]  have  been  giving  to 
our  poor  through  the  American  sister  of  charity ! 
I  only  know  to-day  how  the  Russian  officers,  in 
gratitude  to  her,  have  been  contributing  all  of  this 
year  to  the  support  of  her  home  for  factory  girls. 
Ah !  it  has  been  a  good  fortune  to  lyo  to  have  you 
Russians  here,  and  to  learn  your  goodness." 


CHAPTER  XLH 
SAYONARA! 

Sunday,  November  19th. 

OUR  hospital  ship  has  come  and  gone;  has 
returned  again,  and  sailed  away  with  the 
last  fevered  and  crippled  and  ailing  Russian. 
The  barrack  wards  are  empty,  and  long  rows  of 
bedding  hang  airing  in  the  rich  autumn  sunshine. 
With  the  Mongolia  came  Countess  I ,  Count- 
ess I ,  Countess  B ,  and  others,  whom  I 

had  seen  depart  from  Petersburg  on  the  first  Red 
Cross  trains.  For  nearly  two  years,  now,  these 
devoted  women  have  been  actively  working  in 
hospitals  and  on  hospital  trains.  Several  of  them 
were  at  Mukden  when  the  great  battle  began,  and 
made  their  escape  with  the  fleeing  army  on  foot, 
their  places  in  the  ambulances  given  to  the  wounded 
whom  they  succoured  on  the  way.  Such  experi- 
ences as  they  have  gone  through  surpass  all  belief, 
and  I  look  upon  them  with  awe,  with  the  reverent 
respect  due  to  beings  above  and  apart  from  all 
their  class  and  order.  All  of  them  show  the  strain 
of  work  and  war,  of  horrors,  hardships,  of  suffer- 
ing witnessed  and  endured;  all  of  them  are  aged 
352 


SAYONARA!  853 

and  saddened  in  these  terrible  months  since  I  saw 
them.  They  are  eager  to  return  to  Russia.  They 
foresee  some  terrible  years  for  us  all.  De  Witte 
has  launched  his  reforms;  a  constitution  and  a 
parliament  are  promised.  All  Russia  has  hurled 
itself  into  a  carnival  of  license  and  wild  excess  in 
the  name  of  liberty.  The  empire  is  in  uproar, 
and  no  one  can  foresee  the  end. 

As  the  hospital  closed  its  wards,  the  little  Red 
Cross  nurses  went  to  their  homes,  and  the  officers 
have  made  each  departure  an  occasion  for  a  dem- 
onstration of  friendship  and  respect.  We  all 
went  to  the  station  to  see  them  off,  and  presented 
them  with  bouquets  with  inscribed  ribbon  stream- 
ers, and  escorted  them  on  board  their  ships  at 
Takahama.  To  Vladimir's  and  Lyov's  special 
nurses,  Mira  and  I  have  sent  money  gifts  that  will 
be  delivered  to  them  by  the  post  office  at  their 
homes;  and  both  have  the  heaviest  grey  crape 
kimonos,  gold  obis,  and  painted  neck-pieces  that 
Mira  could  send  me  from  Kioto — a  complete 
ceremonial  dress  for  each  dear  little  woman,  who 
has  worn  the  nurse's  uniform  for  so  long  a  time. 

And  photographs !  I  have  given  Vladimir's 
picture  in  his  Red  Cross  domino,  and  in  his  white 
duck  clothes,  by  the  dozen — to  all  the  nurses,  to 
all  our  friends  and  neighbours;  and  also  to  all 
Madame  Takasu's  little  circle  of  poets  and  beauty- 
worshippers,  with  whom  Vladimir  and  I  together 


354         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

sat  in  the  castle  keep  and  watched  the  September 
moon  rise  clear  and  golden  beyond  Dogo's  hills — 
the  soft,  soul-compelling,  gentle  moon  of  peace. 

Tosaburo  has  gone,  his  temples  are  empty  of 
wistful  horios,  and  the  priests  are  purifying,  in 
the  hygienic  sense.  Later  come  the  rites  of 
purification  by  salt  and  fire,  by  symbols  and  long 
Buddhist  ceremonies.  The  hammer  of  the  car- 
penter, tearing  down  fences,  inner  partitions,  and 
bunks,  is  as  continuous  as  when  they  were  building 
so  hastily  last  winter  for  the  Port  Arthur  gar- 
rison. The  lyo  troops  are  returning  from  Man- 
churia, and  the  shrill  Banzais!  of  the  street 
crowds  affect  me  differently  than  when  they  went 
with  marching  regiments  going  out  to  the  war, 
going  to  death,  and  to  deal  death. 

We  are  to  keep  in  touch  with  Tosaburo  until  the 
last  moment,  so  that  I  can  see  his  uncle  when  he 
passes  through  to  a  triumph  in  Tokyo — Vladi- 
mir and  I  are  now  going  to  spend  a  fortnight  in 
Kioto  to  see  the  Siemenoffs  and  their  mise  en  scene. 

Sandy  goes  with  us,  Andrew  Y having 

secured  this  privilege  and  detail  from  Daniloff. 
We  are  full  of  plans,  busy  with  plans ;  but  in  my 
heart  I  am  desolate  at  leaving,  and  I  cannot  look 
around  my  little  home  and  garden  without  my 
eyes  filling  with  tears.  This  has  been  a  home,  a 
haven.  It  has  all  been  for  the  best.  "Hcec  olim 
meminisse  juvabit."  Truly  it  is  so. 


SAYONARA!  355 

Sunday,  December  3rd. 

We  have  seen  Kioto;  and  Lyov,  and  "the  pris- 
oner's bride,"  in  their  exquisite  chalet  on  the  slope 
of  Momoyama  ;  and  have  watched  sunsets  together 
from  that  hilltop  whose  view  could  well  enchant 
the  great  Taiko.  Some  of  the  Siemenoffs'  treas- 
ures we  have  seen,  too,  but  not  all;  as  many  had 
been  boxed  to  make  room  for  the  later  inflow  of 
everything  rare  and  beautiful  that  the  Contessa 
and  her  scouts  could  lay  hands  on. 

And  those  boxes  —  where  will  they  go?  Over 
that  we  have  had  long  discussions,  and  Lyov's 
future  seems  an  uncertain  thing.  The  old  Russia 
will  not  claim  him  either,  I  fear.  First,  he  will 
apply  for  a  long  leave  before  returning  for 
retirement;  for,  with  his  knee,  he  can  never  be  a 
dashing  dragoon  again.  The  Contessa  proposes 
that  they  go  first  to  America,  and  stop  the  winter 
in  the  Calif  ornias,  where  her  mother's  brother  has 
an  orange  and  olive  estate  in  the  south.  After 
that?  "We  will  find  you  in  England,  I  fancy," 
she  says. 


"I  have  been  everywhere,"  said  Andrew  Y  -  . 
"I  wanted  to  see  the  Japanese  in  the  back  prov- 
inces, for  I  feared  that  Matsuyama  was  a  trick, 
a  show  town,  and  lyo  a  show  province  put  upon  us 


356         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

— something  like  those  theatrically  clean  towns  in 
Holland,  you  know.  I  wanted  to  catch  the  peas- 
ants lying  in  pigstyes,  with  untidy  fields.  But, 
no.  It  is  the  same  everywhere.  The  same  little 
thatched  cottages  made  to  order  for  sketch  classes ; 
the  same  little  shrines  along  good  roads ;  the  same 
neat  little  geometrical  puzzles  of  tidy  rice  fields; 
every  valley  and  every  hillside  planted  to  the  last 
inch,  as  far  as  water  can  reach;  and  plantations 
of  trees  like  a  model  forestry  school  all  over — in 
every  province — along  the  railway — miles  away 
from  the  railway.  It  is  no  trick.  I  give  it  up. 
As  an  exhibit,  it  is  hors  concours.  Put  it  under 
a  glass  case,  and  let  me  go  away  and  think  awhile. 
Maybe  I  am  dreaming,  and  it  is  not  so  different 
from  the  rest  of  the  world.  Maybe  all  the  world 
has  come  to  look  like  Japan,  in  these  ages  that  I 
have  been  here." 

"Yes,  and  I  thought  it  a  trick,  too;  so  I  asked 
the  head  nurse  where  she  lived,  and  I  got  leave,  and 
went  one  hundred  and  forty  miles  in  jinrikisha, 
and  on  foot,  across  Shikoku  to  Tosa  province," 

said    R .      "I    stayed    in    their    house — they 

wouldn't  let  me  go  to  a  tea  house — and  all  their 
friends,  all  the  doctors  and  nurses  from  far  and 
near,  came  and  showed  me  how  charming  and 
courteous  are  the  real  Japanese  people — the  non- 
military  class,  who  have  not  been  corrupted  by 
Prussian  drill.  Heretofore,  I  had  only  met  those 


SAYONARA!  357 

tainted  by  Germany  and  its  ideals.    Now,  I  believe 
in  Bushido." 


I  went  to  the  Hiogo  railway  station  to  see  Tosa- 
buro's  uncle  pass  through  with  the  Field  Marshal, 
on  their  way  to  the  triumph  in  Tokyo.  I  demurred 
at  being  present  at  such  a  scene,  but  Tosaburo 
insisted,  and  said  he  had  already  telegraphed 
down  to  Okayama  warning  his  uncle  of  my  pres- 
ence. "There  will  be  many  foreign  ladies  and 
Japanese  ladies  there,  but  my  uncle  will  wish  to 
see  you,  his  old  friend." 

In  the  crowded  station,  I  was  lost,  save  for 
Tosaburo,  whose  glittering  full-dress  uniform  and 
face  glowing  with  patriotic  enthusiasm  were  a 
sight  to  inspire  one. 

And  such  Banzais!  when  the  train  paused  in  the 
vast  Hiogo  station  !  Enough  to  lift  its  arched  iron 
roof.  All  eyes  were  upon  the  Field  Marshal  but 
mine,  which  sought  and  found  the  fine  Italian 
countenance,  the  sharply-cut  features,  the  flashing 
eyes,  and  the  inscrutable  smile  of  my  old  friend 
the  staff  colonel  —  now  the  Lieutenant-General  and 
Chief  of  Staff  —  the  brain  and  soul,  and  moving 
spirit  of  the  Ever  Victorious  army.  Briefly  I 
made  my  thanks  to  him,  and  acknowledged  my 
deep  indebtedness  to  Tosaburo,  my  friend  of  early 
days,  my  protector  of  later  days  ;  and,  with  f  elici- 


358         AS  THE  HAGUE  ORDAINS 

tations  on  the  blessed  peace,  we  parted.  I  found 
it  impossible  to  convey  to  Vladimir  any  conception 
of  this  living  force,  this  human  dynamo,  this  ani- 
mating spirit  that  so  overpoweringly  impresses  one 
when  in  the  presence  of  the  outwardly  calm,  re- 
served, repressed,  yet  smiling  man,  who  is  —  the 
world's  greatest  general!  The  Twentieth  Cen- 
tury God  of  War. 


December  llth. 

The  Siemenoffs  and  ourselves  are  returning  in- 
dependently at  our  own  expense  through  America, 
through  grace  of  Daniloff  and  the  home  author- 
ities, with  long  leave  for  recuperation.  Sandy  von 
Rathroff,  to  his  great  relief,  has  leave  to  go  via 
America,  also.  We  are  making  him  a  little  dot 
that  will  keep  him  until  he  finds  his  footing  in  the 
New  World,  where  he  means  to  make  his  "escape," 
as  he  calls  it,  from  us,  and  under  a  new  name  begin 
the  life  of  an  American  citizen.  Vladimir  pleads 
with  him  to  resign  in  proper  form  for  his  family's 
sake;  but  the  boy  is  obstinate,  and  his  hatred  of 
Russia  seems  to  increase  daily.  He  believes  in, 
and  he  gloats  over,  the  reports  of  riots  at  Vladi- 
vostok and  Harbin,  and  the  hideous  happenings 
in  Odessa  and  the  south.  "Live  in  such  a  country  ? 
Be  of  such  a  people?  Never!  Leave  this  sun- 
shine, this  beautiful  country  and  all  its  chrysan- 


SAYONARA!  359 

themums,  for  the  gloom  of  Siberian  barracks,  or 
the  town  where  I  lived  my  years  of  exile?  No! 
No!  No!  Civis  Americanus  sum,"  and  the  young 
hot-head  wraps  an  imaginary  toga  around  him  and 
strides  down  the  deck  like  Henry  Irving. 

I  have  been  reading  to  Vladimir  that  favourite 
chapter  of  his  in  "Kokoro,"  where  in  liquid  prose, 
in  language  as  smooth  as  melted  velvet,  Lafcadio 
Hearn  begins  so  musically:  "Hiogo,  this  morning, 
lies  bathed  in  a  limpid  magnificence  of  light  in- 
describable." I  look  over  to  the  massed  roofs  of 
Kobe  climbing  steeply  to  the  green  hills  beyond, 
out  to  the  soft  expanse  of  pearl  sea  and  the  blue 
heavens  above;  and,  without  a  sound  the  water 
eddies  around  the  stern,  the  Awaji  shore  slips 
around  to  our  starboard  side,  the  Sanuki  moun- 
tains rise  and  recede,  and  our  prison  life  is  ended. 


THE    END 


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University  of  California  ^ 

from  which  It  wasj>orrowed. 


A     000  045  642     6 


